Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England: Buggeswords

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Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England

10.1057/9780230598713 - Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England, Richard Dutton

Also by Richard Dutton BEN JONSON: To the First Folio

* BEN JONSON: AUTHORITY: CRITICISM JACOBEAN CIVIC PAGEANTS (editor)

* MASTERING THE REVELS: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama MODERN TRAGICOMEDY AND THE BRITISH TRADITION NEW HISTORICISM AND RENAISSANCE DRAMA (co-editor with Richard Wilson) SELECTED WRITINGS OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (editor)

THOMAS MIDDLETON: Women Beware Women and Other Plays (editor)

* A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM: A New Casebook (editor)

* From the same publishers

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BEN JONSON: Longman Critical Reader (editor)

Buggeswords Richard Dutton

10.1057/9780230598713 - Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England, Richard Dutton

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Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England

© Richard Dutton 2000

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2000 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). Outside North America ISBN 0–333–72184–5 In North America ISBN 0–312–23624–7 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dutton, Richard, 1948– Licensing, censorship, and authorship in early Modern England / Richard Dutton. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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1. English drama—Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500–1600—History and criticism. 2. Theater—Censorship—England—History—16th century. 3. Theater– –Censorship—England—History—17th century. 4. Drama—Censorship—England– –History—16th century. 5. Drama—Censorship—England—History—17th century. 6. Copyright licenses—England—History—16th century. 7. Copyright licenses—England—History—17th century. 8. English drama—17th century– –History and criticism. 9. Playwriting—History—16th century. 10. Playwriting– –History—17th century. I. Title.

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10.1057/9780230598713 - Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England, Richard Dutton

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All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

Acknowledgements

vi

A Note on Texts

viii

Preface: Buggeswords and Analogical Reading

ix

1

The Regulation and Censorship of Early Modern Drama

1

2

Licensed Fools: the 1598 Watershed

16

3

Obscenity and Profanity: Sir Henry Herbert's Problems

with the Players and Archbishop Laud, 1632±34

41

4

Marlowe: Censorship and Construction

62

5

Shakespeare: the Birth of the Author

90

6

Jonson: the Epistle to Volpone

114

7

Middleton: the Censorships of A Game at Chess

132

8

Buggeswords: the Case of Sir John Hayward's

Life of Henry IV

162

Notes

192

Works Cited and Consulted

201

Index

211

v

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Contents

I am grateful to the publishers and editors of the following items for permission to reproduce them, or material from them. Several of them have been revised almost beyond recognition to take their place in the scheme of the book. `Shakespeare and Marlowe: Censorship and Construction', Yearbook of English Studies 23 (1993):1±29, was a much augmented and revised version of the essay which was co-winner of the Hoffman Prize for Distinguished Publication on Marlowe in 1990. `Buggeswords: Samuel Harsnett and the Licensing, Suppression and Afterlife of Dr John Hayward's The First Part of the Life and Reign of Henry IV' first appeared in Criticism 35 (1993): 305±40. `The Birth of the Author' was published first in Elizabethan Theater: Essays in Honor of S. Schoenbaum, edited by R.B. Parker and S. Zitner (University of Delaware Press: Newark, 1996), 71±92; a revised version appeared in Texts and Cultural Change in Early Modern England, edited by Cedric C. Brown and Arthur Marotti (Macmillan: London, 1997): 153±78. `The Lone Wolf: Jonson's Epistle to Volpone' was published in Refashioning Ben Jonson: Gender, Politics and the Jonsonian Canon, edited by Julie Sanders with Kate Chedgzoy and Sue Wiseman (Macmillan: London, 1998), 134±54. `The Regulation and Censorship of Early Modern Drama' is a chapter in A Companion to Shakespeare Studies, edited by David Scott Kastan (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999): 377±91. ` ``Discourse in the players, though no disobedience'': Sir Henry Herbert's Problems with the Players and Archbishop Laud, 1632±34' first appeared in The Ben Jonson Journal 5 (1999): 37±62. All of these were written, or published in those forms, at the invitation of their editors, and I would like to thank them for their support and encouragement throughout: Andrew Gurr, Cedric Brown and Arthur Marotti, Brian Parker and Sheldon Zitner, Julie Sanders, David Scott Kastan, and Richard Harp. `The Birth of the Author' was specifically written for a Festschrift for Sam Schoenbaum, whom I never met, but whose work on Shakespearean biography I greatly admire. I am most grateful to the Huntington Library for a fellowship in the summer of 1992, and to the British Academy which paid for my travel out there. My work there led directly to the essay `Buggeswords', and contributed significantly to my edition of Women Beware Women and Other Plays by Thomas Middleton, World's Classics (Oxford: Oxford Univi

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Acknowledgements

versity Press, 1999). That in turn led me to further thoughts on the censorship of A Game at Chess, which appear here. Another legacy of my time at the Huntington Library is the number of friendships I made there which have left their mark on this and other work: I should particularly mention Cyndia Clegg, Paulina Kewes, James Knowles and James Riddell. I would also particularly like to thank Roslyn Knutson and Andrew Gurr for their invitation to participate in the Theater History seminar at the World Shakespeare Congress in Los Angeles in 1996. This gave me the pleasure and privilege of sharing in the deliberations of a unique group of consummate professionals. I met many of them again at the Shakespeare Association of America meetings in Washington DC in 1997 and San Francisco in 1999. A developed version of my paper for the earlier seminar appears here as `Licensed Fools: the 1598 Watershed'. Here too I would particularly like to thank David Bevington, Barbara Freedman, Bill Ingram, Alan Nelson and Peter Roberts for sharing their thoughts with me on matters related to this book. A special word of thanks to Hans Werner, whom I have never met, but with whom I have corresponded a good deal. Some of the information he has selflessly shared with me appears below. And thanks to Steve Longstaffe for bringing to my attention the use of `buggs words' in The Troublesome Raigne of King John, which forms part of the epigraph at the head of the Preface.

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Acknowledgements vii

Unless otherwise specified, quotations from Sir Henry Herbert, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare are from the following editions: The office-book of Sir Henry Herbert: N.W. Bawcutt, The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama: the Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels 1623±73 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). Parenthetic references (Herbert) are to page numbers. Ben Jonson: Ben Jonson. Ed. C.H. Herford, Percy Simpson and Evelyn Simpson. 11 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925±52). This includes the `Conversations with Drummond', 1, pp. 128±51, and `Timber, or Discoveries', 8, pp. 563±649. Parenthetic references within the text (Conversations, Discoveries) are to the line-numbering. All Jonson texts are silently modernised. William Shakespeare: The Riverside Shakespeare. Textual ed. G. Blakemore Evans. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974). This book uses a Short Citation system for most of its references, to minimise distracting endnotes. All works from which quotations are taken, or to which reference is made, are collected alphabetically by the author in `Works Cited and Consulted'. Where an author is mentioned, either within the text or parenthetically, it is implicit that the reference is to that listing; where I draw on more than one work by an author there is a secondary reference to the date of publication (subdivided a, b, etc., if necessary). References without page numbers alert readers to the relevance of a work in general; citation of page numbers implies a more specific reference. The system includes references to early modern authors other than Herbert, Jonson and Shakespeare, in modern editions where practicable. So `Marlowe, 1976', for example, refers to the Everyman Christopher Marlowe: Complete Plays and Poems, edited by E.D. Pendry and J.C. Maxwel, while `Marlowe, 1993' refers to the Revels Plays Dr Faustus, edited by David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen.

viii

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A Note on Texts

But husht, breathe not buggs words too soon abroad, Lest time prevent the issue of thy reach. (1 Troublesome Raigne of King John1) I have got you a transcript of it that you can pick out the offence if you can, for my part I can find no such buggeswords, but that everything is as it is taken. ( John Chamberlain writing to Dudley Carleton about Dr John Hayward's First Part of the History of Henry IV )

This book rather took me by surprise. My family still remembers a day in May 1990 when I let out a very loud whoop which signalled the last touch to the typescript of Mastering the Revels: the Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama. That was the end of seven years' work, and I thought I had said everything I had to say on the subject. But I was wrong. Just as surely as Beatrice-Joanna in The Changeling, I had become the deed's creature ± the deed in my case being the central thesis of that book. My aim in Mastering the Revels was to relate the censorship of early modern drama in England (and by censorship I meant to comprehend all the structures of regulation and control) to the processes of patronage and licensing which informed the social structures of the day. I did this, in particular, by focusing on the Master of the Revels, the court official in the Lord Chamberlain's department who was most central to these operations. I examined the way the four men who held this post between 1579 and 1642 (Edmond Tilney, Sir George Buc, Sir John Astley and Sir Henry Herbert) acquired their powers and exercised their authority, within the wider structure of practices of their day. Not long into that study I realised that I was not alone in pursuing a subject which had been largely dormant for much of the century. When I started, the standard authority was still Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve's Government Regulation of the Elizabethan Drama (1908), which had been complemented in 1917 by Joseph Quincy Adams's edition of some of the key documentation, The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels 1623±1673. The great compendia of E.K. Chambers and G.E. Bentley had largely embedded this and other ix

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Preface: Buggeswords and Analogical Reading

material, without significantly reconceptualising its historical location. And in an era of largely formalist, moralist or a-historical New Critical literary scholarship few had been prompted to re-think the received picture. One honourable exception was Glynne Wickham who, in the course of his Early English Stages, 1300±1660 (1959±81), briefly but influentially attempted to tie the city- and court-centred structures which mainly preoccupied Gildersleeve and myself to the wider picture of provincial drama, especially the religious cycles, much of which was regulated into non-existence during this period. In 1984, however, Annabel Patterson's Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Reading and Writing in Early Modern England decisively announced that new thinking was both needed and happening. A rehistoricisation of literary studies (particularly early modern literary studies) was taking place, within which critics ± Marxist, New Historicist, cultural materialist, feminist, revisionist ± were beginning to find `dangerous matter' in the most (on the surface) anodynely apolitical of texts. And this simply did not square with the processes of censorship which were supposed to prevent it. Patterson's solution was to posit coded understandings between writers and authorities, which normally allowed much more to be discussed (at a fictional distance) than was formally permitted. Philip Finkelpearl also wrote a perceptive essay on `The Comedians' Liberty' (1986), which in a private letter to me he described as a ground-clearing exercise for the book on Beaumont and Fletcher he was then writing; what he was finding in that drama was incompatible with the nature of the censorship which was supposed to operate, and he articulated more clearly than anyone before him how different in practice was what the Jacobean dramatists were able to get away with from the repressive conditions they supposedly endured. My own book in effect explored, as far as the drama was concerned, the social and political practices within which the Patterson and Finkelpearl hypotheses might be substantiated. But this was not the last word on the matter. In the course of my writing, Janet Clare and Richard Burt both published early earnests of what were to be book-length studies of early modern licensing/censorship ± the former actually appeared while mine was in proof. I shall address these in more detail later. Suffice it to say for now that neither saw early modern dramatic censorship in the relatively liberal, revisionist light that Patterson, Finkelpearl and I had done. And more work continues to be done. To mention only two major contributions: N.W. Bawcutt has brought out a much revised and expanded version of the work Adams had originally done, The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama: The Dramatic Records of

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x Preface: Buggeswords and Analogical Reading

Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels 1623±73, and Cyndia Susan Clegg's Press Censorship in Elizabethan England offers a challenging revisionist account of press censorship in the period. A debate was opening up, paralleling the wider critical and theoretical debates of the period. In such a context, back in 1990, I had finished the book but not the argument. In particular, the scope of Mastering the Revels had not allowed me to discuss in any detail the implications of the processes of censorship I was exploring for modern readings of the texts affected. Nor had it given me room to consider the ways in which ideas of censorship, both then and now, have interplayed with the concept of authorship itself, consciously or unconsciously reinforcing certain definitions of `the author'. These became the subject of various articles and chapters, which are collected together here for the first time. It is a central contention in my arguments about the censorship of the period that early modern readers (and by this I mean to comprehend theatre audiences) read plays and other texts analogically, often `applying' quite exotic fictions to contemporary persons and events. And that censors were quite aware of the fact, but usually chose to ignore it unless they deemed the `application' to be too transparent or provocative. So that when Ben Jonson piously decries the fact that `application is now become a trade' (Epistle to Volpone) he is both retaliating against the Earl of Northampton and Sir James Murray (who had recently denounced unwelcome `applications' in, respectively, Sejanus and Eastward Ho) and encouraging readers to look for other `applications' in Volpone itself and elsewhere. The most compelling evidence of the dramatic censors' collusion ± on his own terms ± in this game is, I have suggested, Sir Henry Herbert's treatment of Massinger's Believe As You List, while the clearest example of a line being drawn is Herbert's testimony of King Charles finding a passage in the lost The King and the Subject `too insolent'. (I discuss both of these in Chapter 1 `Regulation and Censorship'). There remains, however, some resistance to the idea that such politically-charged analogical reading was normal, the usual condition of writing and reading in the period, and not just something that happened when scandals such as those surrounding Chapman's Byron plays or A Game at Chess drew attention to it. Alert readers will have spotted in my phrasing an allusion to Annabel Patterson's book, which rehearses a good deal of the evidence for the practice, including George Puttenham's engagingly indiscreet acknowledgement of the fact that pastoral literature invited such a reading, being calculated:

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Preface: Buggeswords and Analogical Reading xi

under the vaile of homely persons, and in rude speeches to insinuate and glaunce at greater matters, and such as perchance had not bene safe to have beene disclosed in any other sort, which may be perceived in the Eglogues of Virgill, in which are treated by figure matters of greater importance than the loves of Titirus and Corydon. (Puttenham, p. 38) It would be redundant of me to reproduce all her other examples. But I do want here briefly to review some recent additional evidence, further clinching what was already a case well made. There is, in fact, relatively little hard evidence about how people read specific texts in the period, and much of what does exist may well be prudentially discreet. But a useful starting point may be the passage from which I derive my subtitle (and which I discuss in context in Chapter 8 `Buggeswords'). It is the response of the indefatigable letter-writer, John Chamberlain, to the epistle dedicating Haywood's Life of Henry IV to the Earl of Essex. The epistle was the nub of the work's notoriety, but as Chamberlain wrote to Dudley Carleton: `I can find no such buggeswords, but that everything is as it is taken'. The OED rather unimaginatively defines `bug's-word' as `A word meant to frighten or terrify; a word that causes dread. Usually in pl. Swaggering or threatening language'. It clearly derives from the old Welsh word `bug', which means a hobgoblin, bogy or scarecrow (often imaginary rather than real), a sense that survives today in `bugbear', which the OED renders as `A sort of hobgoblin . . . supposed to devour naughty children; hence, generally, any imaginary being invoked by nurses to frighten children'. I rather fancy that there is some such ironic inflection of nurses frightening children in Chamberlain's use of `buggeswords' ± words that would turn an innocent-seeming dedication into a hobgoblin of treason; triggers that transform harmless discourse into subversive doctrine. (The anonymous author of The Troublesome Raigne of King John also uses the term rather archly, suggesting that dangerous words may forestall the reality of dangerous action). Chamberlain suggests not only that there are no dread-inducing words in the Hayward preface, but that the whole search for them is one inspired by nurse-like authorities trying to frighten potentially naughty children. The status of buggeswords in texts ± true hobgoblins or merely imaginary ones ± is the acid test of most censorship in the period, and depends on the capacity of readers to shift from one mode of reading to another on the smallest and most ambiguous of signals. In that sense Chamberlain's `I can find no

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xii Preface: Buggeswords and Analogical Reading

such buggeswords, but that everything is as it is taken' properly stands as an epigraph to this volume. In Mastering the Revels I mentioned two notable instances where the veil of discretion about how a text might be read was allowed to drop, when the matter was at a suitable remove. Fulke Greville's account of burning the manuscript of his Antonie and Cleopatra was probably not consigned to paper until a decade or so after the event, and was not published in his lifetime; the play was: sacrificed in the fire; the executioner, the author himself, not that he conceived it to be a contemptible younger brother to the rest, but lest, while he seemed to look over-much upward, he might stumble into the astronomer's pit: many members in that creature (by the opinion of those few eyes which saw it) having some childish wantonness in them apt enough to be construed or strained to a personating of vices in the present governors and government . . . and again, in the practice of the world, seeing the like instance not poetically, but really fashioned in the Earl of Essex then falling . . . stirred up the author's second thoughts, to be careful, in his own case, of leaving fair weather behind him. (Greville, p. 93) The explicit suggestion that the play might be read as a reflection on Essex (even as Greville disavows the intention) is what is so unusual. This example, of course, can always be pigeon-holed as closet drama by a courtier, never intended for a wider audience, and so not evidence of popular practice. The same might have been said of Samuel Daniel's Philotas, had it not been for the fact that Daniel himself became licenser to the newly repatronised Children of the Queen's Revels in 1604 and imprudently allowed it to be staged. For this he was called to account by the Privy Council, and the surviving correspondence with it members ± Sir Robert Cecil (Essex's rival) and the Earl of Devonshire (Essex's former ally) ± makes it clear that this play had in actuality been read as shadowing Essex's career. It is one matter to admit as much in private correspondence, but Daniel also coolly alluded to the matter in the `Apology' appended to the subsequent printed text: And for any resemblance, that thorough the ignorance of the History may be applied to the late Earl of Essex. It can hold in no proportion but only in his weaknesses, which I would wish all that love his

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Preface: Buggeswords and Analogical Reading xiii

memory not to revive. And for mine owne part having beene particularly beholding to his bounty, I would wish God his errors and disobedience to his Sovereigne, might be so deepe buried underneath the earth, and in so low a tombe from his other parts, that he might never be remembred among the examples of disloyalty in this Kingdome, or paraleld with Forreine Conspirators. (Daniel, p. 157) Of course, what Daniel does is to deny that any parallel could or should be drawn between Philotas and Essex ± even as he admits that one had been. This is totally disingenuous, since a systematic comparison between the play and its historical sources puts it virtually beyond dispute that Daniel had intended such an analogy. The disclaimer, like Jonson's lament over `application', is in fact an advertisement, an invitation to future readers to repeat the `ignorance' of the Privy Council. Ours is not the first age to discover that censorship can be good for sales or self-promotion. For such reasons, authors are never entirely to be trusted as readers of their own works. Albert H. Tricomi's fine study of Philip Herbert's annotation of his copy of Chapman's Byron plays is thus particularly instructive (1986). Herbert, by the 1630s Earl of Pembroke, was not an `ordinary' reader, if such a creature exists, since as Lord Chamberlain he was ultimately responsible for theatrical activity in the country. But he had no particular stake in these plays, the notoriety of which was more than 20 years in the past when he made his notes. What Tricomi demonstrates is that Pembroke recognised significant analogies between the narratives of Chapman's plays and the careers of several notable English politicians, including Robert, Earl of Leicester, the second Earl of Essex, the Earl of Salisbury and the Duke of Buckingham. It is indisputable that, when the Tragedy was staged in 1608, it outraged the French Ambassador with its offensive portrayal of various French notables.2 My own further assessment is that, where Chapman deviated from the history of the actual Duc de Biron (as in scenes where the Queen slaps Madame de Verneuil, and Biron has to be restrained from drawing his pistol in the presence of the king) he was pointing English audiences towards parallels with Essex ± as Robert Cecil probably appreciated when de la Broderie complained to him (Dutton, 1991, pp. 184±5). But that was all long in the past when Herbert annotated the play, and it is striking that he took a longer view, involving figures both earlier and later. Buckingham, then only a child, could never have been a target when Chapman wrote. Herbert's reading is in no way circumscribed by a

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xiv Preface: Buggeswords and Analogical Reading

sense of the author's intentions or immediate frame of reference. Since, moreover, even Buckingham (the latest named figure) was dead by the time these notes were drafted, it would be difficult to argue that Herbert was reading the play under the pressure of then current events: it is as if the text lies open to be over-read in the light of any number of actual histories. Whatever else we make of this practice, it must be the case that no censor could hope to regulate what an audience of such readers might infer from, or over-read upon, any given text at any given moment. It underlines the ways in which, for example, any of the Elizabethan history plays might be (in Jonson's terms) `subject to construction'. It should occasion no surprise that the play of Richard II was so subject on the eve of the Essex rebellion, nor that no one suffered for the fact in the aftermath (Barroll, 1988). Hans Werner's account of The Hector of Germanie is also relevant in this context (1996). This was a highly anomalous play performed by citizen amateurs in 1613. As Werner observes: `One of the few known instances of an amateur production mounted in a public playhouse rented for the occasion, the play was ``made for Citizens, who acted it well'' and therefore the playwright ``deemde it fitte to be Patronizde by a Citizen'', here Sir John Swinnerton, Lord Mayor of London (1612±13) and ``principal ornament '' of ``the worthy Companie of the Marchantaylors'' (Dedication, p. 67)' (p. 117). In this context the play might well have escaped the licensing regime of the Master of the Revels and, like the Lord Mayors' Shows, have come under the authority of the sponsoring trade guild (Dutton, 1995, pp. 9, 73±4). Nevertheless, the play is in other respects a typical piece of Jacobean pseudo-history, set in the time of the Black Prince, with no ostensible reference to contemporary affairs. Yet Werner detects a clear encoding in the play: `(palsgrave = Black Prince) = (Black Prince = Prince Henry) = (palsgrave = Frederick V). Factoring out (palsgrave = Black Prince), the equation collapses into Frederick V = Prince Henry. That is the whole point of the play . . .' (p. 119). Thus, for Werner, the play equates King James's new son-in-law with his dead elder son, an equation with important potential implications for Anglo-German relations and what became the Thirty Years' War. It is an entirely plausible decoding, and for once not entirely uncorroborated. When Thomas Scott, author of the scandalous Vox Populi (1620), defended himself in Vox Regis (1624), he turned to the drama for precedents on the use of topical allegory: `why not Gondomar, as well as Hieronymo or Duke d'Alva? And why not Philip, as well as Peter, or Alfonso, or Caesar? Or why might I not make as bold with them, as they [playwrights] our blacke Prince, or Henry the eighth, or

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Preface: Buggeswords and Analogical Reading xv

Edward the sixth, or Queene Elizabeth, or King James, or the King and Queene of Bohemia?' (Scott, p. 10). As Werner observes, `Since The Hector of Germanie is the only known English play of the period prominently featuring two of the characters mentioned here (King Peter, or Don Pedro the Cruel of Castile and the Black Prince), it would appear that Scott either saw the play or read the subsequent quarto' (p. 119). That, I suppose, remains debatable. But Scott clearly and helpfully suggests that it was the practice of dramatists to write about historic figures as shadows of their modern counterparts. And this corroborates the view that playwrights commonly (perhaps even normally) expected their plays to be read analogically. In this connection I should also like to thank Hans Werner for bringing to my attention material which significantly reinforces my own earlier suggestion that Fletcher and Massinger's Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt was intended to be read, at least in part, as a shadowing of the fate of Sir Walter Ralegh (Dutton, 1991, 208ff). Ralegh was executed in October 1618, the Dutch statesman Barnavelt in May 1619, and the King's Men performed the play (despite an official intervention from the Bishop of London) that August. The Bishop's unusual intervention may suggest that the play's discussion of Arminianism ± a style of Christianity at odds with the current orthodoxies of the Church of England ± caused some disquiet. But the play clearly also had other uncomfortable dimensions. And, as with Chapman's Byron plays, it seems entirely likely that the play's foreign topicality conveniently disguised its English application, an over-layering which would be doubly taxing for any censor. Despite obvious differences (Ralegh was not an Arminian, for example), the parallels between Barnavelt and Ralegh were strong: two patriots and leaders in their country's struggles with Spain lost royal favour and were eventually beheaded on dubious charges. The play seems to underscore these parallels by stressing Barnavelt's connections with France. Thomas Hariot's notes of Ralegh's last words on the scaffold make clear how important, and publicly known, was a French connection in Ralegh's demise.3 It was beyond dispute that Ralegh had engaged in negotiations with French diplomats before his last voyage to Guiana, apparently seeking a safe refuge if things should go wrong, and the French were prepared to offer this. The inference from Hariot's notes must be that these negotiations had been interpreted as disloyalty to the king, a charge perhaps compounded by supposed slanders against the king when Ralegh was arrested on his return from the voyage by his kinsman, Sir Lewis Stukeley. Stukeley was much reviled for his part in the arrest, and then re-arrest when Ralegh belatedly attempted to flee to France.

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The speech on the scaffold was obviously intended to make public Ralegh's own perspective on all of these matters ± starting with the French connection. And this makes it the more likely that Barnavelt in the play, who negotiates with French ambassadors, would partly have been over-read as Ralegh. This conjecture, like the other instances I have cited, hinges on an audience's capacity for analogical reading. It does not depend on the play being a full-blown allegory, matching Barnavelt and Ralegh point-forpoint. One of the besetting sins of attempts to find topical meaning in early modern drama has been a determination to make the parallels too thorough and exact, explaining every detail.4 On the contrary, as Philip Herbert's reading of Chapman's Byron plays shows, and as I shall argue at length in Chapter 7 `Middleton: Censorships of A Game at Chess', the analogies were commonly incomplete, titillatingly so. Daniel's Philotas was not Essex in every detail, nor could Greville's Antony have been. What mattered were the suggestive correspondences, the innuendoes and inferences. This level of indeterminacy is what made it possible for licensers like the Masters of the Revels to `allow' such texts. This is an issue that will recur throughout this book. In Chapter 3 `Obscenity and Profanity' I look at Sir Henry Herbert's response to the players' revival of Fletcher's The Woman's Prize in the context of a topicality that could only derive from analogical reading. His prickliness on questions of obscenity and profanity was, I suggest, linked to ways in which they might prompt such readings. In Chapter 6 `Jonson: the Epistle to Volpone' I look at a document which is centrally concerned with delimiting the possibility of (and responsibility for) such readings, and defining the role of official censorship in these processes. Chapter 7 `Middleton: Censorships of A Game at Chess' reconsiders various aspects of the censorship and non-censorship of A Game at Chess, and investigates the suggestion that it can be read against the grain as a work critical of (in particular) the Duke of Buckingham, despite the prevailing tone of national unity and celebration: this is not implausible, given the pervasive practice of analogical reading. Chapter 8 `Buggeswords' analyses the case of John Hayward's Life of Henry IV as the best documented instance of the early modern authorities choosing to read a text analogically in an attempt to trap not only its author but more significantly its dedicatee, the Earl of Essex. The anxious refusal of both the author and the licenser to accept that topical meanings might have been intended is a reminder of how vulnerable anyone might be (as Sir Henry Herbert found in his dealings with Archbishop Laud) when the usual accommodations

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Preface: Buggeswords and Analogical Reading xvii

surrounding censorship in the period broke down under extreme political pressure. The cumulative evidence suggests that analogical readings, over-reading texts in the light of contemporary persons or concerns, was very much the norm, not the exception. It further suggests that this was widely understood, not least by the Masters of the Revels and their counterparts, the clerical licensers for the press. Their role, therefore, inevitably became one, not of eradicating `applications' (which was impossible) but of keeping them within bounds. The fact that Philip Herbert could read Chapman's Byron plays a generation after they were written in the light of the Duke of Buckingham demonstrates the range of difficulty and necessary accommodation involved. My reading of what happened over The Woman's Prize suggests a belated awakening to the risks inherent in allowing the unregulated revival of old plays. This evidence offers further proof that the `flash-points' of early modern censorship and regulation were not primarily products of intensive attempts to police political and religious ideology but rather moments of breakdown, when the usual accommodations failed to protect the privileged classes who expected to be shielded from demeaning public scrutiny. In normal circumstances those classes were sufficiently patrician not to notice (or pretend not to notice) a wide range of veiled commentary about them. Only at specific moments did they, or the licensers on their behalf, draw the line and demand either strict censorship or exemplary punishment. A large part of the difficulty of understanding such matters at this remove is identifying the precise provocations which caused the line to be drawn. As some of the examples discussed here suggest, neither authors themselves, nor their audiences, nor even their licensers are entirely reliable witnesses as to what caused, or might cause, offence. And modern perceptions of what might have been at issue (such as political ideology or obscenity) always need to be weighed in the balance of early modern cultural codes.

Most of the essays here, then, explore constructions of early modern writing and theatre in the light of the practices of licensing and censorship as I defined them in Mastering the Revels. But where the earlier volume outlined a theory of early modern dramatic censorship, this looks at the consequences of that theory for modern readings of the texts that were produced under that censorship, for readings of author-

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ship as a phenomenon that (some might say paradoxically) flourished under its aegis, and also for our understanding of the place of the actors in these systems of control. The first two chapters in different ways define the contexts. Chapter 1 `Regulation and Censorship', originally commissioned by David Scott Kastan for A Companion to Shakespeare Studies, allows me to rehearse on a very much smaller canvas the central contentions of Mastering the Revels in a way that makes them accessible to readers of this book. But it is not simply a restatement of the arguments of the book. I have taken the opportunity to fine-tune certain details of the thesis in the light of further thought. In particular, Bill Ingram's work on the origins of the London theatres made me realise that the conflicts between court and city over the licensing of the actors (within which the role of the Master of the Revels evolved) were less black-and-white affairs than I, and many others, had supposed: money was, at times, as much an issue as political authority. I have also been increasingly convinced by a suggestion first put to me by Brian Parker: that the system of censorship I had outlined was perfectly consonant with the normal habits of rule of the English Establishment, which typically deflects intellectual or ideological threats to itself by refusing to take them too seriously, opting (at least in the first instance) for a patrician indifference over rigorous repression. The fate of Oscar Wilde, which required a degree of obstinate self-martyrdom, is a more recent measure of this proposition. The remit of this essay also required me to carry the story down to the closing of the theatres in 1642. Mastering the Revels had drawn a line at 1626, when William, 3rd Earl of Pembroke ceded the post of Lord Chamberlain to his brother Philip. Throughout my work, however, I had drawn for models on the records of Sir Henry Herbert (Master of the Revels from 1623±73, barely overlapping with my own focus), simply because those of his predecessors have all but disappeared. This essay forced me to look at Herbert's work in the context of his own time, and the result follows in Chapter 3 `Obscenity and Profanity'. This focuses on a very particular sequence of events, but one which (as I have suggested) has widespread implications for our understanding of analogical reading. It also shows the whole process of licensing and censorship under severe pressure, the accommodations which had normally characterised the system under Elizabeth and James ± that very patrician indifference ± all but breaking down under Charles I's Personal Rule and William Laud's officious attention. In it, we see Herbert himself reflecting on what he had inherited from his predecessors in a way that speaks to the whole era. The essay on `Licensed Fools' suggests ways in which the dramatists

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Preface: Buggeswords and Analogical Reading xix

themselves reflected in their works on the system of containment which these two chapters outline. If, then, I continue to refer to Mastering the Revels (Dutton, 1991) it is in the spirit of pointing to fuller documentation on particular points, not because Licensing, Censorship and Authorship in Early Modern England is unintelligible without it. The structure of this book makes it a self-contained work, complementing its predecessor but not dependant upon it. The opening chapters are the nub: all the others refer to them and depend, to a greater or lesser degree, on the reading of the processes of cultural control which they resume. Other chapters explore successive major dramatists ± Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson and Middleton ± in the light of those processes of control, highlighting how earlier conceptions of those processes coloured and distorted our reading of their writing, and indeed our construction of them as `authors'. There is also a chapter on the `licensed fool' character, as a spokesperson for the actors who originally translated the writings of these dramatists to the stage; this reflects on the ambivalent `freedom' of the theatre in the period, a privileged forum but one for which there were real if unwritten limits. The final chapter, on Hayward's Life of Henry IV, relates the world of the theatre to that of those who wrote and licensed printed books ± in this instance a lawyer and a priest who both saw how unforgiving early modern government could be when the gloves were off, yet lived and conspicuously flourished in later years, when conditions returned to something more like normal. The book has most commonly been studied in conjunction with Shakespeare's Richard II, the subject-matter of which it extensively parallels. In the case of Shakespeare's play we have the voices of neither the author nor his censors to explain why the text was treated as it was. For the Life of Henry IV, uniquely, we have both.

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The Regulation and Censorship of Early Modern Drama

King Have you heard the argument? is there no offense in't?

Hamlet No, no, they do but jest; poison in jest ± no offense i'th'world.

King What do you call the play?

Hamlet `The Mouse-trap.' Marry, how? tropically: this play is the image

of a murther done in Vienna; Gonzago is the duke's name, his wife, Baptista. You shall see anon. 'Tis a knavish piece of work, but what of that? Your Majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not. (Hamlet, 3.2.232±42)

Hamlet plays many roles, several of them quite explicitly theatrical, including that of Master of the Revels. He determines that the actors shall play The Murder of Gonzago at court, and when Claudius shrewdly suspects that it may contain `offense' (i.e. offensive material) he assures him that it contains `no offense i'the'world' (i.e. no crime of any sort) ± because the poisoning it depicts is only fictional, not the real thing. It is a sophisticated piece of quibbling, going to the heart of the role of the Master of the Revels, the key figure in the licensing and censorship of professional drama in the time of Shakespeare and down to the closing of the theatres in 1642. He was primarily an official in the Lord Chamberlain's office, charged with providing suitable entertainment at court. When Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream demands a `play / To ease the anguish of a torturing hour' (5.1.36±7), Philostrate is on hand as his `usual manager of mirth' (35).1 Yet he can only outline a sorry list of options for the wedding night. As Theseus warms to Pyramus and Thisbe, Philostrate insists: `It is not for you. I have heard it over, / And it is nothing, nothing in the world' (77±8). That is, he has done his proper job as Master of the Revels ± he has seen a dress rehearsal of the production and knows it is 1

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not fit for the court. In the real world, it would not even have been on a list of options, but in the freedom of comedy Theseus insists: `never anything can be amiss, / When simpleness and duty tender it' (82±3). If we strip away the fictional packaging, Shakespeare is obliquely addressing his own situation as a commoner in a troupe of `mechanicals', frequently called upon to play before royalty but at all times required to attest `simpleness and duty' (R. Wilson, 1993b).2 The structure of licensing and censorship that grew up around the Master of the Revels was precisely one that enabled professional actors to become adjuncts of the court and aristocracy, while also providing them with a relatively stable environment within which they could ply their trade for a more diffuse audience in the public theatres. In 1581 the Queen gave the serving Master, Edmond Tilney, a special commission, which authorised him: to warne commaunde and appointe in all places within this our Realme of England, aswell within francheses and liberties as without, all and every plaier or plaiers with their playmakers, either belonging to any noble man or otherwise, bearinge the name or names of using the facultie of playmakers or plaiers of Comedies, Tragedies, Enterludes or whatever other showes soever, from tyme to tyme and at all tymes to appeare before him with all such plaies, Tragedies, Comedies or showes as they shall in readines or meane to sett forth, and them to recite before our said Servant or his sufficient deputie, whom we ordeyne appointe and aucthorise by these presentes of all suche showes, plaies, plaiers and playmakers, together with their playing places, to order and reforme, auctorise and put downe, as shalbe thought meete or unmeete unto himself or his said deputie in that behalf. (Chambers, 4, pp. 285±7) He was also given powers to enforce this authority. This commission was the basis of what became Tilney's role as licenser and censor of the professional theatre in the London region. Some scholars have seen it as a next step towards absolute state control of players and playing, in the wake of concerted efforts in the provinces to eradicate the mystery cycles and other religious drama closely associated with Roman Catholicism (Wickham, 1959±81, 2:1, p. 94). But W.R. Streitberger (1978) has shown that Tilney was given these powers specifically to aid him in his primary role as the provider of theatrical entertainment at court, and the social dynamics which governed the

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control of professional theatre in London were actually very different from those operating in other spheres of early modern life. Prior to his appointment (in 1579) the Office of the Revels had been in disarray: it was expensive to run, some of the shows it sponsored were not satisfactory, and there were problems with the aristocrats who patronised acting companies competing to have their own `servants' perform at court. The commission was aimed at dealing with the first two problems, by drawing on what was still a relatively recent resource ± a professional theatre industry semi-permanently resident in London, signalled by purposebuilt theatres like the Red Lion (1567), the Theatre and the Curtain (both 1576). Tilney's commission gave him the power to compel these troupes to rehearse their repertoire before him, with a view to the most satisfactory pieces being performed at court during the festive season. Until 1607 he had capacious quarters in the old palace of St John's where, as Thomas Heywood recalled in An Apology for Actors `our Court playes have been in late daies yearely rehersed, perfected, and corrected before they come to the publike view of the Prince and the Nobility'. The quality of drama at court duly improved, and it was provided more economically than hitherto. The problem of competition at court between influential patrons of the actors was largely resolved for a decade in 1583 by a decision to create a new royal troupe, the Queen's Men (McMillin and MacLean; Gurr, 1996, pp. 196ff). Tilney was instructed to create this eÂlite company, drawing on players from existing companies; it was clear that they were specifically subject to his authority, and they received the lion's share of performances at court over the next several years. Tilney, however, remained only one figure in a complex array of authorities. The key competing authorities in respect of the theatres were on one side the court itself, usually represented by the Privy Council: one member, the Lord Chamberlain, had a particular brief for acting matters, though Lord Admiral Howard (Tilney's patron) also took a particular interest in them; and on the other side the City of London, variously represented by its Lord Mayor, its Common Hall, Court of Common Council and Court of Aldermen. The received picture of this competition has it that the court staunchly supported the actors, while the Puritan-inclined City resented their presence and tried to put them out of business. But this is misleading. The court was only ever interested in supporting actors patronised by its own senior members, often regarding their commercial activities as in effect rehearsals for performance before the Queen; it readily followed Parliament in stigmatising unlicensed actors as rogues and vagabonds. In the City there were

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legitimate concerns about the maintenance of order and the threat of disease (which the Privy Council sometimes shared), as well as the promotion of crime and lewd behaviour; but there was also a shrewd sense that these enterprises could be licensed and so taxed to support the hospitals for the poor and diseased (Ingram, 1992, pp. 119±49; see below, Chapter 4 `Marlowe: Censorship and Construction', pp. 73±7).3 At times negotiations between the parties also boiled down to a contestation over their respective prerogatives, in which the theatres were almost an incidental issue. As a result of such tensions ± financial as much as ideological ± all the early purpose-built theatres were constructed outside the jurisdiction of the City authorities, in the liberties to the north and south, where they came under the authority of the magistrates for Middlesex and Surrey.4 But until around 1596 ± and perhaps even after that ± there was also regular playing at inns within the City's jurisdiction, notably the Bell, the Bull, the Cross Keys and the Bel Savage (Ingram, 1978, pp. 140±1). The role of the Master of the Revels evolved in the midst of these conflicting authorities and agendas, and not without competition. As early as 1574 the Common Council of London sought to establish that playing places in the City should be licensed, and that plays performed there should be `first perused and allowed', by persons appointed by the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen. This was partly to rebut the Lord Chamberlain's proposal that `one Mr Holmes' should undertake such a role. They wanted to preserve the City's own authority and to control profits from the licensing, rather than promote `the benefit of any private person' (Ingram, 1992, pp. 127, 142). There is no evidence, however, that such persons ever were appointed. In 1589, the Privy Council instructed Tilney to act in consort with nominees of both the Lord Mayor and the Archbishop of Canterbury in a Commission for the censoring of all plays to be performed `in and about the City of London'; but the articles setting it up are all we ever hear of this Commission. By 1592 Tilney's importance was such that the City authorities saw his office as an impediment to the kinds of restraint they wanted to exert themselves and they sought (though without success) to buy him out. By then, he was certainly receiving regular fees from Philip Henslowe. Aspects of Henslowe's accountancy remain inscrutable, but it seems Tilney was receiving separate fees for licensing the theatres, the acting companies and each play ± which he would `peruse' (that is, read rather than see in rehearsal ) and then `allow' when he was satisfied with it, appending his signature at the end of what became the only `allowed copy' for performance purposes. Tilney kept records of licences in his

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office-book, but the office-books of both Tilney and his successor, Sir George Buc, have been lost. Only from the time of Sir John Astley (1622), who quickly sold his office to Sir Henry Herbert (1623), do we have information from their shared office-book ± but even that is patchy and second-hand, since the original long since disappeared (Herbert, pp. 13±26). We often have to infer from this what may have been earlier practice. The precise nature and rate of fees changed a good deal over the period as a whole, but a significant economic symbiosis between the Master of the Revels and those whose livelihood he licensed remained throughout (Dutton, 1991, pp. 52, 116; Herbert, pp. 38±40). Precisely which companies Tilney licensed in the 1580s and early 1590s we do not know, apart from the Queen's Men: probably only those who actually performed at court, notably Leicester's, Strange's, the Admiral's and the boy companies (Chapel Royal/Oxford's and Paul's) closely associated with the court, though their licences as adjuncts of choir schools were different from those of the adult players. As early as 1574 Leicester's Men had received a patent which gave them the right to perform anywhere in the country, providing that their plays had been `sene and allowed' by the Master of the Revels (Chambers, 2, pp. 87±8; Gurr, 1996, pp. 187±8). This was probably sought by the company as defence against civic authorities (including London) who tried to prevent them from playing; the Master's licence certified that their plays were fit for court, and ought not to be challenged elsewhere. This reinforced the status they asserted as servants of a patron like Leicester, whose livery they wore. In practice, patronage by an influential aristocrat was an important adjunct to commercial viability for any company, and a form of control in as much as loss of patronage could have important consequences. Earlier in Elizabeth's reign members of the gentry had patronised the actors, but from 1572 this privilege was restricted to the aristocracy (barons and those of higher degree), though companies could locally get permission to perform from two justices of the peace. Those without patronage or permission were subject to the harsh laws against rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars (Chambers, 4, p. 270).5 In such a context we can see why some (including the City authorities) might see the Master of the Revels as the protector of the most successful actors, as much as their regulator. And we may suppose that the actors appreciated this themselves; his licence gave them protection against unwelcoming authorities, an opportunity of lucrative performances at court and the sole right to perform plays `allowed' to them ± a version of performing copyright. As a censor it seems that each of the Masters was scrupulous, could on occasion be strict but on the whole applied

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relatively broad criteria of what was permissible, determined largely by their position within the court. In the years before Elizabeth's reign a number of edicts specifically restricted plays in English, but tacitly permitted those in Latin in privileged contexts, such as the universities, Inns of Court and noble households. At the start of her reign Elizabeth issued a proclamation (16 May 1559) which instructed royal officers everywhere on what was not acceptable in plays performed within their jurisdictions: And for instruction to every one of the sayde officers, her majestie doth likewise charge every one of them, as they will aunswere: that they permyt none to be played wherein either matters of religion or of the governaunce of the estate of the common weale shalbe handled or treated, beyng no meete matters to be wrytten or treated upon, but by menne of aucthoritie, learning and wisedome, nor to be handled before any audience, but of grave and discreete persons. (Chambers, 4, pp. 263±4) Here too there is an assumption that such matters might be put on stage (even in English) in privileged contexts, an implicit court standard of what was acceptable. This explains how a play like Gorboduc, which clearly if mythologically treats of matters `of the governaunce of the estate of the common weale' (the need for the Queen to marry, beget heirs or otherwise provide for the succession), could be performed in the Inns of Court. But the play passed into the professional repertoire after it was published, circumventing notional restrictions. Similarly Masters of the Revels, who were supposed to be reviewing plays for possible performance before the monarch, implicitly applied a court standard in their licences. One of the clearest demonstrations of this comes in Herbert's office-book (January 1631): `I did refuse to allow of a play of Messinger's, because itt did contain dangerous matter, as the deposing of Sebastian king of Portugal by Philip the <Second,> and ther being a peace sworen twixte the kings of England and Spayne' (Herbert, pp. 171±2). So he refused to licence a play he deemed overtly hostile to the king's current foreign policy. Yet five months later he licensed a play called Believe As You List which is transparently a re-working of the play he had turned down, merely transposed to classical antiquity. It could be an oversight, but this is unlikely. All the Masters were literate and sophisticated men ± Tilney a diplomatic genealogist, Buc a highly respected historian and Herbert the brother of the poets, Edward and George Herbert. I suspect rather that Herbert was well aware that this was

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the same play, re-worked ± but judged that it was no longer an overt affront to the royal prerogative or to a friendly foreign power. In that context, it was acceptable. It was not for him to second guess either Massinger's intentions or what audiences might infer from material that was not openly provocative. There is something very patrician about all this ± Herbert, as representative of the privileged classes, not deigning to notice what did not strictly require to be noticed. As Annabel Patterson puts it: `there were conventions that both sides accepted as to how far a writer could go in explicit address to the contentious issues of his day, how he could encode his opinions so that nobody would be required to make an example of him' (1984, p. 11). To return for a moment to Hamlet: The Murder of Gonzago was an entirely innocent piece of work, doubtless duly licensed (in the fictional world) by Tilney's counterpart in Elsinore. Hamlet's appreciation of its aptness for a particular audience was provocative but not strictly an `offense' ± just as the aptness of the Richard II performed on the eve of the Essex rebellion was suspicious but not in itself punishable (Barroll, 1988).6 But his insertion of a passage not cleared by the licenser was an `offense' in itself.7 While we do not strictly know what was in that passage, it seems almost certain to have been something that ± for one critical member of the audience ± breaches the art-life boundary. Claudius is unmoved by the sight of his own crimes in the dumb show, but reacts intemperately to hearing that the poisoner (`nephew to the king') will woo the dead king's widow. The king/nephew/widow triangle revolves, and in that moment all the fictional veils are down: a tacit accusation of guilt has become a pointed promise of revenge. It was normally the Masters' function precisely to ensure that the fictional veiling was adequate, so that serious offence might not be offered to members of the court or friendly foreign dignitaries. They also needed to be alert to immediately contentious issues, with possible public order implications; but in other respects they could take quite a relaxed approach to their remit. The only extant manuscript of a play that shows Tilney's attentions is Sir Thomas More, about a man seen by many as a Catholic martyr to Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII; the play depicts More going to his death for refusing to accept the Act of Supremacy ± though it tactfully does not go into detail about this extremely delicate subject. We might have supposed that Tilney would ban the play outright, but his markings suggest he was careful about its main theme, though not overly-disturbed. On the other hand the opening scenes, depicting riots against aliens in London, brought this strict warning: `Leave out the insurrection wholy & the Cause ther off & begin with

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Regulation and Censorship 7

Sr Tho: Moore att the mayors sessions with a reportt afterwardes off his good service don being Shrive [Sheriff] of London uppon a mutiny Agaynst the Lumbardes only by A Shortt reporte & nott otherwise at your perilles. E. Tyllney' (Dutton, 1991, Plate 7). His concern is almost certainly regarding similar anti-alien riots in London at the time the play was first drafted (Long). Feelings against French immigrants were running particularly high, so references to the Lombards might be less inflammatory; but the main thrust is to replace graphic scenes of rioting with a short report of More's actions. In short, Tilney seems much more concerned by the immediate public order resonances of the play than by its broader ideological implications. We may see something analogous in the censorship of the 1597 quarto of Richard II. We do not know if the abdication scene was cut by Tilney (either when it was first licensed or later) or by the press censor (Dutton, 1991, pp. 124±7). But we have the apparent anomaly of censorship which allows the murder of a king to be shown openly, while cutting the very stylised and non-inflammatory abdication. The most compelling explanation of this is that the scene specifically shows Richard's abdication being sanctioned by Parliament, suggesting that Parliamentary authority might outweigh that of the monarch (Clegg, 1997b). In the context of 1597, with no agreed successor to Elizabeth and no agreed mechanism for finding one, this was highly contentious. Again, the censor's attention seems to be on immediately provocative matters rather than on potentially subversive sub-texts in the play as a whole. The fraught situation as the reign neared its uncertain end did play its part in a sequence of Privy Council initiatives concerning the theatres, which finally installed the Master of the Revels centre-stage. (These are all considered in more detail in the next chapter). In July 1597 they issued an extraordinary order, which has never been fully explained, that the theatres should be `plucked down' (Wickham, 1969; Ingram, 1971±2). But it was never enforced. Instead they restricted the number of companies authorised to play in the London area to two (February 1598), both licensed by Tilney and patronised by two of their own number, the Lord Chamberlain and Lord Admiral, both cousins of the Queen.8 At the same time Parliament removed the right of justices of the peace to authorise playing: patronage was restricted exclusively to the peerage, while the penalties against masterless men were made even more draconian. In June 1600 the two companies were restricted to playing (in the London area) to their `usual houses' ± for the Chamberlain's the new Globe, for the Admirals (after a short delay) the new Fortune. And the number of performances they could give was strictly

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8 Licensing, Censorship and Authorship

limited. The intention was clear: to restrict London playing to two select companies, both patronised by Privy Councillors, in fixed locations and at known times, conditions which Tilney could easily police. The reality was a little different: first the Children of the Chapel, then Paul's Boys, both defunct for a decade or more, were revived under their different licensing arrangements. Then Derby's Men started playing at the Boar's Head, and even performed at court. When they failed to achieve a permanent place among the `allowed' companies they were replaced by Worcester's Men. Worcester, as Master of the Horse and a Privy Councillor, secured them a place among the `allowed' companies ± making three adults and two boys. This was as many companies as the Master of the Revels was ever directly responsible for, usually four and sometimes five, as companies and patronage possibilities fluctuated. Tilney and his successors sought to expand their authority (and revenue) by licensing firstly non-theatrical shows and latterly actors travelling in the provinces (Dutton, 1991, pp. 116, 235±6). But their central concern was always those London-based companies, who in the nature of things were the most successful of their time and bequeathed the overwhelming majority of plays which have survived to posterity. When James I finally succeeded Elizabeth he took four of the five London companies into royal patronage: the Chamberlain's became the King's Men, the Admiral's Prince Henry's, and Worcester's Queen Anne's. The Children of the Chapel became the Children of the Queen's Revels.9 This has commonly been seen as a decisive act of royal absolutism, pulling the theatres away from their popular roots and redirecting their repertoires towards courtly tastes and political perspectives. In fact it was only a logical development of the policy of the Elizabethan Privy Council, taking into account the fact of multiple royal households which had not been an issue before, and it very probably only reinforced the economic instincts of the companies affected. The adult companies remained answerable to Tilney, but the Queen's Revels Boys were given their own licenser, Samuel Daniel, and for the next few years this company (under a variety of titles but until 1608 always at the Blackfriars theatre) was responsible for some of the most notable theatrical scandals of the era. Firstly, Daniel's own play, Philotas (1604), was seen as commenting on the Essex rebellion and he was questioned by the Privy Council. In 1605 Eastward Ho landed Jonson and Chapman in prison and under threat of mutilation; their provocative satire of mercenary Scots courtiers proved to be compounded by failure to have the play licensed at all ± a serious omission when much could be overlooked within the circle of licensed authority, but the flouting of that authority

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Regulation and Censorship 9

might be unforgivable. It seems that only representations to some of the most powerful people at court effected their release. Day's Isle of Gulls (1606), also unlicensed, also caused offence to the Scots, and reheated the old scandal over The Isle of Dogs (see note 8). We presume Daniel lost his post as licenser. Andrew Gurr states: `By the end of 1606, like all the other companies, the Blackfriars company was under the orders of the Master of the Revels' (Gurr, 1996, p. 352). This is plausible, but more than we know, and the company continued to cause scandal, with Chapman's Byron plays (1607±8) and other works. The fact is that the company had fostered a repertoire of politically-charged satirical drama from the time they were resuscitated; this may well have found encouragement under Queen Anne's patronage, and they continued to be controversial whoever was licensing them, at least until they lost the use of the Blackfriars (Lewalski, p. 24). There is evidence that other parts of the profession resented the threat to their collective livelihood; Heywood in his An Apology for Actors, urges them `to curbe and limit this presumed liberty', while the `little eyases' additions to the folio Hamlet have been convincingly linked to this period (Knutson, 1995). The lines of authority in the Revels Office seem further confused by the fact that in 1606 Sir George Buc took over the licensing of plays for the press; these powers were formerly held by clerics of the Court of High Commission, who licensed all other printed books. Buc had held the office of Master in reversion since 1603, but we do not know how he acquired this new authority. It has been supposed that he acted as the ageing Tilney's deputy but there is no evidence of this, and Tilney continued to collect his allowance for attendance at court until his death. Only then in 1610 can we be confident that one man, Buc, was licensing all the London companies, as well as playtexts for the press. He inherited from Tilney a system of licensing and control that did not change in essence until the closing of the theatres. From 1606 this included the need to attend to the provisions of Parliament's `Acte to restrain the Abuses of Players', which sought to put an end to blasphemous language on the stage. Most though not all texts licensed or relicensed after this are more careful (see, for example, the differences between the quarto and folio Volpone and Othello); the manuscript of The Second Maiden's Tragedy (1611), which bears Buc's licence, shows that he was alert to the issue, marking a number of places where such changes were necessary, perhaps expecting the actors to change the others (Dutton, 1991, pp. 194±209). Herbert later felt his predecessors had not been as scrupulous on these matters as he was, but his changes to Davenant's

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10 Licensing, Censorship and Authorship

The Wits caused problems. Davenant had influence at court, and so Herbert reviewed it with King Charles himself: `The king is pleasd to take faith, death, slight, for asseverations, and no oaths, to which I doe humbly submit as my masters judgment; but under favour conceive them to be oaths, and enter them here, to declare my opinion and submission' (Herbert, p. 186). Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt (1618) is another manuscript where Buc's hand is visible; we see a careful method of lightly pencilled markings, some of which are later reinforced in heavy ink, with warning crosses in margins where he perhaps intended to consult the actors (Howard-Hill, 1988). Where he finds objectionable material he tries to find acceptable alternatives, and seems only to cross it out altogether as a last resort. He is particularly alert to depictions of the Prince of Orange, whom he had encountered in his earlier career as a diplomat; he loses patience in an initialled note: `I like not this: neithr do I think that the prince was thus disgracefully used. besides he is too much presented' (Dutton, 1991, pp. 208±17, and Plate 9). We learn during the Game at Chess controversy, that at some point `there was a commaundment and restraint given against the representinge of anie moderne Christian kings in those Stage-playes' (Howard-Hill, 1993, p. 200; Dutton, 1991, p. 242). On the whole, however, Buc seems patient and constructive, only drawing a line when faced with outright provocation, as in a strongly anti-monarchist passage which contains the loaded suggestion (ostensibly meant for those on stage, but equally likely to be picked up by an audience) `you can apply this' (Dutton, 1991, pp. 214±15). Buc tinkered, redrafted, but finally crossed out the whole passage. In all probability the play (rather like Chapman's Byron plays) was doubly problematic since it depicts recent Dutch history, and so might be diplomatically sensitive; but it was probably read as a commentary on the death of Walter Ralegh who, like Barnavelt, was a `patriot' who had fallen from royal favour and been executed.10 Buc finally went mad, probably from the pressures of trying to run an office in a court that was all but bankrupt. This perhaps explains how some actors managed to circumvent the Revels Office, and obtained licences by other routes ± a situation which Lord Chamberlain Pembroke tried to rectify with a special warrant of November 1622, confirming the exclusive authority of the Revels Office in such matters throughout the country (Dutton, 1991, pp. 225±6). Perhaps because of such problems, Buc's successor, Sir John Astley, quickly sold the post to Sir Henry Herbert (Dutton, 1990; Bawcutt, 1992). The outcome was a situation in which Herbert was the client and kinsman of his Lord Chamberlain, the

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Regulation and Censorship 11

powerful third Earl of Pembroke; even when Pembroke vacated his office in 1626, in favour of his brother, the Earl of Montgomery (later fourth Earl of Pembroke), the essential ties of patronage and kinship remained. This perhaps helped to maintain a continuity of emphasis and practice in the Revels Office (in particular helping to extend a recognition of his authority into the provinces), at a time when the supremacy of Buckingham and later the personal government of Charles I made for a very different political atmosphere from that in which the largely consensual role of the Master of the Revels had evolved. Herbert had been in office only a year when the most resonant theatrical scandal of the era occurred. Middleton's A Game at Chess was performed to packed houses for an unprecedented nine days in a row, before the protests of the Spanish Ambassador had it stopped. The play (the subject of Chapter 7 `Middleton: Censorships of A Game at Chess') is a lively satire on Jesuit wiles and the machinations of the previous Spanish Ambassador, Gondomar, contriving to review recent AngloSpanish relations in unusually close detail. Gondomar and the Archbishop of Spalato were impersonated in some detail, and while other characters were shrouded in the allegory of chess pieces it was evident that they represented, among others, the Kings of Spain and England, Prince Charles and Buckingham. We know that Herbert gave the play a licence in the usual way, but commentators then and some scholars since have supposed that the play may have been specially sponsored at the highest level. This is unprovable, and probably not a necessary conjecture. England and Spain were on the brink of war, a context in which Herbert would have felt no need to protect Spanish sensitivities (as he did over Believe As You List) and may have felt that the depiction of the English court was acceptably patriotic. Perhaps the lengths to which the actors went to impersonate Gondomar (acquiring a cast suit of clothes and a `chair of ease' for his anal fistula) created more of a stir than he anticipated, and breached the fictional veiling on which he normally insisted (Believe As You List is again instructive). In 1632 he recorded: `In the play of The Ball, written by Shirley, and acted by the Queens players, ther were divers personated so naturally, both of lords and others of the court, that I took it ill' (Herbert, p. 177). The chess allegory may have looked adequate veiling on paper, but as with The Ball performance was a different matter.11 Middleton may have spent some time in prison over A Game at Chess, but the King's Men suffered no more than a brief suspension of playing (see below, pp. 145±6). The business clearly did not over-awe them, since in December 1624 they staged The Spanish Viceroy (now lost, but

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12 Licensing, Censorship and Authorship

clearly exploiting the same anti-Spanish sentiments) without Herbert's licence. He was so incensed ± and so sensitive to the implications for his own standing ± that he got all the patented members of the company to subscribe to a letter (transcribed in his office-book), acknowledging their fault, promising not to repeat it and submitting to his authority (Herbert, p. 183). Yet again, however, no one actually suffered the harsh penalties which potentially lay in store either for libeling someone important on stage or for flouting the licensing regulations. Although dramatists and actors spent relatively brief periods in prison, no one involved in the theatre in the period suffered the grim mutilations of John Stubbes or William Prynne, or the prolonged imprisonment of John Hayward, for their transgressions in print (Finkelpearl; Kaplan). Which is a testament of sorts to the effectiveness of the Revels Office as an instrument of regulation, but also to the general good-will of the court towards the actors it patronised. In October 1633 something about a revival of Fletcher's The Woman's Prize (or The Tamer Tamed, c. 1611) caused Herbert's particular indignation and severely strained his relations with the actors (Herbert, pp. 182±3). Normally where the actors still had the `allowed copy' and were performing it unaltered, they did not require it to be re-licensed. Yet Herbert stopped a performance of this play at short notice, which `raysed some discourse in the players, though no disobedience'. His recorded objections were to `oaths, prophaness and ribaldrye', which he certainly did take seriously. But I argue in Chapter 3 `Obscenity and Profanity' that something more specific and serious probably caused him to react as he did. The fact that the King's Men and Herbert were already in dispute over Jonson's The Magnetic Lady, which had been referred to Archbishop Laud himself in the Court of High Commission, is almost certainly relevant. Herbert now insisted that old plays should be relicensed `since they may be full of offensive things against church and state, ye rather that in former time the poetts tooke greater liberty than is allowed them by me'. The actors concerned later apologised for their `ill manners'; they knew how things stood. One effect of the growing identification of the leading companies with the court, which clearly affected Astley and Herbert's terms of office, was the emergence of gentlemen or courtier playwrights, who were in a position to challenge the authority of the Master of the Revels.12 Davenant's challenge over The Wits is an example of this. Astley had problems with a play by Lodowick Carlell, a courtier with connections. His officebook records: `6 Sep. 1622, for perusing and allowing of a new play called Osmond the Great Turk, which Mr Hemmings and Mr Rice affirmed to me

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Regulation and Censorship 13

that Lord Chamberlain gave order to allow of it because I refused to allow it first . . . 20s' (Herbert, p. 137). Was it Astley's own idea to refer the play to Pembroke, or had these veterans of the King's Men presumed on Carlell's influence to go behind his back? We do not know, though it must be significant that the normal machinery of perusal, allowance (and payment) is followed, despite Astley's misgivings. Herbert more fully recorded his own referral of The King and the Subject (1638), by the professional dramatist Massinger, to the ultimate authority, the king himself: `who, readinge over the play at Newmarket, set his marke upon the place with his owne hande, and in thes words: ``This is too insolent, and to bee changed''. Note, that the poett makes it the speech of a king, Don Pedro kinge of Spayne, and spoken to his subjects' (Herbert, p. 204). The passage in question (which Herbert carefully transcribed) concerns royal taxation without Parliamentary sanction, transparently a very sensitive issue during Charles I's personal rule. The wonder is that Herbert did not simply rule the passage, or even the entire play, out of court. In fact, he followed Tilney and Buc in doing his best to make it playable ± his allowance was on the condition that `the reformations [be] most strictly observed, and not otherwise', including that the highly provocative title be changed. Yet he still took the precaution of referring it to the king ± whose own reaction is also instructive. The phrase `too insolent' almost suggests that he was used to tolerating insolence, but that this crossed the limits of toleration. (And Herbert carefully notes for future reference that the format of the passage ± a king speaking to his subjects ± constitutes part of the insolence). Even so, there were no recriminations: Massinger was not to be punished for what he very likely thought. There is no evidence of any dramatist of the period being punished for his ideas, opinions or intentions. If this seems suspiciously liberal, we may have to settle for a truth unpalatable to many modern scholars: that in early modern England, players and playwrights were too insignificant for those in power to take all that seriously, except when they were `too insolent' or contrived to offend someone with influence (Yachnin, 1991). And the Masters of the Revels were adept at preventing that from happening too often. It is that which made them, perhaps paradoxically, such an important element in the cultural formula which produced early modern drama. Without their protective presence, giving the theatrical profession a degree of creative and expressive space (albeit within well defined limits), it is unlikely that the plays they licensed could have been as intellectually, socially and politically vigorous as so many of them actually were.

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14 Licensing, Censorship and Authorship

Tensions surrounding The King and the Subject clearly foreshadow the Civil War and the closing of the theatres. But, just as it was misleading to see the early survival of the Elizabethan theatres simply as an assertion of courtly tastes over entrenched Puritan attitudes in the City, it is also a mistake to see what happened in 1642 as the revenge of Parliamentary Puritans, now able to impose their will. The critical ordinance for the cessation of playing was passed by Parliament ± who by then controlled London ± on 2 September 1642. Earlier, on 26 January (before the final breach with the King), an order was moved in the Commons `that the lord chamberlain be desired to move his majesty that in these times of calamity in Ireland and the distractions in this kingdom, that all interludes and plays be suppressed for a season'. But that motion was `laid aside by Mr Pym his seconding of Mr Waller in alleging it was their trade' (Coates et al., 1982, p. 182). If a leading Parliamentarian like John Pym resisted a ban on playing as an infringement of the players' trade, and the House backed him, it is difficult to see what finally happened as the act of a vengeful Puritan Parliament. The whole business underlines the complex mix of political, economic and social pressures within which the theatres had operated up to this point. In fact the September ordinance only requires that `while these sad Causes and set times of Humiliation doe continue, publike Stage-Playes shall cease' ± the `sad Causes' apparently being the rebellion in Ireland, the most important matter before the Commons that day. There was no move against the playhouses themselves, and it is likely that `the prohibition was intended to be a temporary one, to last as long as the crisis which occasioned it' (Roberts). In all probability it was the reaction of the actors themselves to the loss of courtly patronage and protection which turned a temporary prohibition into a state of affairs that lasted 18 years. As Andrew Gurr observes of the King's Men, `even before the actual closure . . . the company seems to have started to disintegrate' (Gurr, 1996, pp. 385±6). Those who had controlled them also parted company in ways that underline how complex were the affiliations in the Civil War. In 1643 Henry Herbert joined the royalist Parliament at Oxford (but never, as was once supposed, fought for the king); by late 1645 he seems to have decided that the royalist cause was lost, and by 1648 he had made his peace with Parliament in London. His kinsman and superior, Lord Chamberlain Pembroke, sided (however reluctantly) with Parliament from the start. Only as positions hardened did a vindictive anti-theatricality overtake Parliament: in 1647 they chose to regard the old legislation against masterless players as applying to all of them; the next year they ordered the demolition of all the playhouses.

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Regulation and Censorship 15

2

The policy of the Elizabethan government (which, for practical purposes, means the Privy Council) towards the business of playing is not always easily defined. It often has to be inferred from actions they either did or did not take, while anything they put into writing may need to be seen as a negotiating posture (in relation, say, to the City of London authorities) rather than as a settled will. In fact, it is probably a mistake to assume that they were consistent in their approach to these matters, which almost certainly never figured very highly among their most pressing concerns, or that they were all of one mind about them. Certain Councillors appear to have taken more of an interest at certain junctures, and perhaps nudged policy in a particular direction for a time. But the effects may only have been temporary. I mention this as a prelude to a reconsideration of the Privy Council's actions in 1597±98, when they appear to have intervened in the theatre business more decisively than at any other time: first ordering the destruction of all the playhouses and latterly restricting London playing to two `allowed' companies. In fact, rather bewilderingly, nothing came of the first order at all, while the terms of the latter unravelled somewhat in subsequent years. Nevertheless I want to argue that this was a decisive watershed, not in every particular but in laying down a framework of policy for handling the actors which would essentially remain in place down to the closing of the theatres in 1642. In these terms it was more significant, for example, than the taking of the major acting companies into royal patronage in 1603±4. And, as I shall argue, the actors and dramatists recognised this significance in the ways that they alluded to it in the plays of the period. 16

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Licensed Fools: the 1598 Watershed

Scott McMillin and Sally-Beth MacLean have established with detail and conviction what previous scholars had only inferred: that the Queen's Men, put together in 1583 by Edmund Tilney, Master of the Revels, were a product of deliberate court policy, instigated primarily by the Earl of Leicester and Sir Francis Walsingham (McMillin and MacLean). They were created as the largest and most prestigious company of the era to fulfil at least two functions: as a touring company (often dividing into two separate troupes) they were meant to show a repertoire of intensely loyalist and Protestant-orientated plays as widely as possible. And in the festive season, settled at least for a time in London, they were to supply the court with high-quality entertainment, their precedence putting an end to the rivalry between the patrons of other troupes for the prestige of performing there. In this latter capacity they dominated court entertainment between their inception and 1588. In all of this `the central government seemed ready to take charge of this burgeoning actors' industry and send it along calculated directions' (McMillin and MacLean, p. 17). This is what concerns me here, since the creation of the Queen's Men must be seen as the first step along the road towards the regulation of London-based playing which took something like final shape between 1598 and 1600. Yet in the 1580s the Privy Council had not yet settled on a definitive game-plan, since after 1588 the primacy of the Queen's Men was allowed to diminish; they `began to share the court calendar with other companies in the seasons of 1588±9 and 1589±90, and . . . lost the court advantage drastically in 1591±2' (McMillin and MacLean, p. 55). The reasons for this are not entirely clear: the company continued to tour until the end of the reign, and if its quality had been diminished it remained open to Tilney to reinforce it from other companies. But he did not do so, and we must suspect that this was not unconnected with the deaths of those Lords of the Council who had backed the company in the first place, Leicester in 1588 and Walsingham in 1590. The other members of the Privy Council made no apparent effort to pursue alternative `calculated directions' for the theatrical profession at this time. Strange's Men and Pembroke's Men enjoyed court precedence in the early 1590s; though their patrons were both influential men, neither was a Councillor, and it is not easy to discern anything resembling policy behind the prominence their companies achieved. It was only with the major reorganisation of the companies precipitated by the plague of 1593±94 (but perhaps not left to unfold randomly) that a new and more settled sense of policy emerged. When the theatres re-opened

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Licensed Fools 17

the Admiral's and Chamberlain's Men had been shaped as predominant companies, in ways that commercial practice alone would not explain. As Andrew Gurr puts it, `In effect, from May 1594 onwards the Admiral's and Lord Chamberlain's companies knew themselves to be based in London as part of the government's policy, with accompanying privileges' (Gurr, 1996, p. 67). They were the only ones to act at court between December 1594 and February 1600. Unlike the Queen's Men, however, there is no evidence that their repertoires were deliberately propagandist in nature; nor was provincial touring a primary element of their agenda. As Gurr suggests, these arrangements arose from the concerted policy of the patrons of the two companies concerned, Lord Admiral Howard and Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon. Both were Privy Councillors, both were first cousins of the Queen, and Howard was, moreover, Hunsdon's sonin-law. Between them they seem to have dictated what was effectively Privy Council thinking on court and London theatre at this juncture, negotiating on behalf of their favoured companies with the city authorities who would have preferred to eradicate activities which they themselves could not control. But this fell far short of blanket support for the acting profession. By 1596 companies were denied the regular use of innyard theatres within the City of London's jurisdiction (which may have pleased the city authorities but certainly limited the number of acting venues).1 And that year the Privy Council prevented the Burbages from using the Blackfriars as a theatre, following a petition from local residents ± who included Hunsdon's own son. The Howard/Hunsdon exclusivity was disrupted, moreover, when Hunsdon died in 1596, to be replaced as Lord Chamberlain by Lord Cobham, a circumstance which may well have left its traces in the Falstaff/Oldcastle revisions in the Henry IV plays, since Oldcastle was an ancestor of the Cobhams (G. Taylor, 1985, 1987). The situation reverted to something like its earlier symmetry early in 1597 when Cobham in turn died, to be replaced as Lord Chamberlain by the second Lord Hunsdon. Yet later that year the theatrical profession faced apparently the gravest of all the crises that beset it during Elizabeth's reign. Perhaps stung by the Isle of Dogs affair (the sequence of cause and effect is debatable), and urged on yet again by the City of London authorities who demanded `the present staie & fynall suppressinge of the saide Stage playes, as well at the Theatre, Curten, and banckside, as in all other places in and abowt the Citie' (28 July), the Privy Council that very day temporarily suspended playing for the summer (which was not unusual, given the threat of plague) but ordered `that also those play houses that are erected and

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18 Licensing, Censorship and Authorship

built only for such purposes shalbe plucked downe . . . and so to deface the same as they maie not be ymploied agayne to suche use' (Dutton, 1991, pp. 107±8). Even Howard and Hunsdon signed the orders, and it is far from clear why they were not carried out.2 Yet the eventual outcome of all this may suggest that it was never the Privy Council's intention to eradicate playing altogether, but rather to impose a more formal framework on the Howard/Hunsdon arrangements. The Chamberlain's Men, after all, had already lost the use of the Theatre in their dispute with the lease-holder, Giles Allen, and may yet have hoped for permission to use the Burbages' Blackfriars theatre. The Rose, where the Admiral's Men performed, was already sinking into the marsh on which it had been built. If all other public theatres were destroyed, but the duopoly were given authority to start again in new premises, the purposes of the Privy Council and those they patronised would have been ideally met. Indisputably, as William Ingram (1971±72) has argued, those who lost most in this crisis were Francis Langley, the owner of the new Swan Theatre, and Pembroke's Men who put on The Isle of Dogs there: parties outside the charmed circle, and competitors to it (three of the sharers in the Admiral's Men, indeed, had defected to Pembroke's). Langley, moreover, had incurred the wrath of another Privy Councillor, Sir Robert Cecil, in an entirely different matter. So the Privy Council order to destroy the theatres may effectively have been a smoke-screen for putting the Swan, in particular, out of business without publicly singling it out. Certainly it was rarely used for playing after this. As for Pembroke's Men, just how `lewd' The Isle of Dogs actually was we have no way of knowing, but the demonstrable effect of the Privy Council's investigation into it (largely conducted by the notorious torturer Richard Topcliffe) was that the company disintegrated before they had any chance of establishing themselves in London. The following year a series of measures were instituted which perhaps made explicit what the Privy Council intended all along. Firstly (9 February) Parliament passed a new Acte for punyshment of Rogues Vagabondes and Sturdy Beggars, prescribing ever more vicious punishments for masterless men ± explicitly including unlicensed players. Ten days later the Privy Council issued directives to the Middlesex and Surrey Justices, and to the Master of the Revels, for the first time publicly restricting the number of allowed acting troupes in the London area to two. The letter to Tilney specifies: Whereas licence hath bin graunted unto two companies of stage players retayned unto us, the Lord Admyral and Lord Chamberlain,

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to use and practise stage playes, whereby they might be the better enhabled and prepared to shew such plaies before her Majestie as they shalbe required at tymes meete and accustomed, to which ende they have bin cheeflie licensed and tolerated as aforesaid . . . We thefore thought good to require you uppon receipt hereof to take order that . . . none [may be] suffered hereafter to plaie but those two formerlie named belonging to us, the Lord Admyral and Lord Chamberlaine, unless you shall receave other direction from us. (Dutton, 1991, pp. 110±11) It also requires Tilney to suppress an unnamed third troupe, who are neither `bound to' him nor can be said to be rehearsing plays for performance at court. What is not clear from the letter is whether the Privy Council were referring to an essentially new situation when they assert that `licence hath bin granted', or whether they meant arrangements as they had in effect largely pertained since 1594, which they were in effect re-instating. Strictly speaking these precise arrangements could not have been in place all this time, since when old Hunsdon died the company turned to his son as a patron rather than to Lord Cobham, and there was a period when the younger Hunsdon was neither a Privy Councillor nor Lord Chamberlain. But they may simply be glossing over the details. Strikingly, the letter carries the authority of the whole Council, though it relates specifically to actors patronised by only two of its members, `us, the Lord Admyral and Lord Chamberlaine'. This needs to be set alongside the new Vagrancy Act; this reconfirmed the provision of the 1572 act, limiting licensed companies to those `belonging to any Baron of this Realme, or any other honorable Personage of greater degree', but removing the provision that companies might be licensed locally for performance by Justices of the Peace. That is, taking the two measures together, the rights of the nobility to patronise acting companies were not infringed, but the privilege of such companies to perform in and around London (as Pembroke's Men and indeed Hunsdon's Men had done, probably quite legitimately, in 1596±97) was restricted to those patronised by members of the Privy Council itself. This privilege was explicitly associated with the fiction that these companies were rehearsing against the possibility of being invited to perform at court, and this made the Master of the Revels their logical regulator. The idea that public acting might be deemed to be rehearsal for court performance was an old fig-leaf deployed in the past by the Privy Council to protect the actors from the City authorities: it

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was used by them, for example, in April 1582, and was explicitly challenged by the Lord Mayor in 1592 when he sought Archbishop Whitgift's advice about eradicating the actors, enquiring `if by any means it may be devised that hir Majestie may be served with these recreations as hath ben accoustomed (which in our opinions may easily bee don by the privat exercise of hir Majesties own players in convenient place)' (Dutton, 1991, pp. 49, 78±9). What is new in 1598 is the very explicit limiting of companies permitted to perform on these grounds to two, that these two are to be patronised by Privy Councillors who are senior members of the royal household, and that they are explicitly under the authority of the Master of the Revels. This in fact defined Tilney's public role for the first time. Although his Special Commission of 1581 had given him plenipotentiary powers over the theatrical world, it is apparent that in practice his dealings had only been with companies (their number unspecified) who stood a serious chance of performing at court. As late as 1589 the Privy Council proposed that he join with a church representative and someone appointed by the Lord Mayor of London in a joint commission to censor plays, which indicates that he was not in fact licensing all plays in the London region at that time. Indeed, he is not mentioned at all in respect of the Isle of Dogs affair, presumably because he had not licensed the play: that would have fallen to the Surrey magistrates. Uncompromised by that affair, Tilney was henceforth explicitly the controller of all permitted London playing. As a distant cousin of Hunsdon and a rather closer one of Howard (the Lord Admiral had originally secured the Revels Office for him), Tilney was an ideal intermediary between the privileged London companies and those in the Privy Council who looked out for their interests. An order of 22 June 1600 attempted to tighten the already very strict 1598 conditions: it reiterated the exclusive licences of the Admiral's and Chamberlain's Men, but restricted their playing to their `now usual houses', respectively the Fortune and the Globe. There was a further ban on playing `in any Common Inn for publique assemblie in or neare about the Cittie' and moreover `forasmuche as these stage plaies, by the multitude of houses and Companie of players, have bin too frequent . . . It is likewise ordered that the two severall Companies of Plaiers assigned unto the two howses allowed maie play each of them in their severall howse twice a weeke and no oftener' (Dutton, 1991, p. 111). Nothing, it would seem, could be clearer or more categorical. But in practice things were nowhere near as clear-cut as this, as the Lords of the

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Council acknowledged when they concluded the order with the admonition to the Lord Mayor and the Justices of Middlesex and Surrey, to whom it was addressed: `these orders wilbe of litle force and effecte unless they be dulie putt in execution by those to whom yt appertaineth to see them executed'. Indeed, already by this date the duopoly of the Admiral's and Chamberlain's Men had been breached by the resuscitation of the boy companies, Paul's Boys and the Children of the Chapel ± both of whom would perform at court in the following revels season. Even more critically, another adult troupe, the Earl of Derby's Men, had already performed at court in the winter of 1599±1600, and had taken up residence in the Boar's Head playhouse, in every respect flouting the Privy Council's orders. Or, more precisely, flouting them in every respect bar one ± they were paying the Master of the Revels 15s. per playing week at the Boar's Head, and so apparently submitting to his authority, even though that was not supposed to extend beyond the two `allowed' companies (Berry, 1986, p. 130). Despite numerous reiterations by the Privy Council of the two-company restriction, Derby's Men remained at the Boar's Head unmolested, and performed again at court in the winter season of 1600±1. In the autumn of 1601, however, they were replaced at the Boar's Head by a new company, an amalgamation of troupes patronised by the Earls of Oxford and Worcester, which would be known by the latter's name. They would perform at court in the 1601±2 season, and finally join the Admiral's and Chamberlain's Men as a third formally `allowed' adult company. Herbert Berry is not alone in seeing all this as very odd, not least in that the Privy Council emerges from it as wildly inconsistent ± in 1597 apparently on the verge of eradicating the playhouses altogether (and certainly stopping playing at The Swan for several years), but thereafter complaining rather lamely that their directives were not being enforced, yet doing nothing about it: `The Privy Council in Elizabeth's time must eventually have thought of theatrical enterprises as falling into one of three categories: 1) those that the central government for one reason or another would not allow at all; 2) those that it would allow and take fees from but not protect from local authorities; and 3) those that it would allow, take the same fees from, and protect from local authorities' (p. 130). The Swan after 1597 would fall into category 1, the Boar's Head from 1599 to 1602 into category 2, the Globe and Fortune from 1600, and the Boar's Head from 1602, into category 3. The issue may be more intelligible, however, if we stop looking at the Privy Council as the driving force in all this. Clearly they were an interested party, and their authority could be all but definitive when they

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chose to exert it (as they did with The Swan). But the habit of reviewing events from a government-centred perspective, as if a modern Prime Minister or President was deliberately dictating policy ± an approach so much encouraged by E.K. Chambers' beguilingly helpful assemblage of all `Documents of Control' into a single, quasi-narrative appendix ± may actually be very misleading (Freedman). I want to think laterally here, of the situation as it related to the regulation and censorship of printed books. From 1586 this was in the hands of the Church Court of High Commission, under the control of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, though most of the day-to-day licensing was handled by their chaplains and other lesser clergy. From a distance the Star Chamber decree setting this up looks like the imposition of an arbitrary and repressive government. The reality, however, was rather different. It was actually the Stationers' Company, rather than the government, who agitated for this development. Edward Arber, the Victorian editor of the Stationers' Register, observes that the `Star Chamber decree of the 23 June 1586 . . . was undoubtedly promoted, not by the Government, but by the principal Stationers chiefly as a protection for their own literary property as an article of commerce' (Arber, 3, p. 17: see below, Chapter 8 `Buggeswords'). The striking thing is that the Stationers' Company already had a monopoly of the English printing industry, under the terms of its 1557 charter. But it was a monopoly they found very difficult to enforce. John Wolfe in particular found ways of conducting business despite not being a Stationer. The 1586 arrangements changed the ground-rules (and Wolfe promptly became an extremely loyal and leading member of the company) since the licensing of books and the business of selling them henceforth went hand in hand. That is, the legal framework was driven by a business imperative, securing an enforceable monopoly (or, strictly, a cartel since members traded independently) for the Stationers' Company: royal and church authority blended seamlessly with self-policing commercial privilege in a perfectly reciprocal pattern of patronage. The Privy Council directive of 19 February 1598 reads like a parallel case, and in my view was ± to paraphrase Arber ± if not undoubtedly, very probably `promoted, not by the Government, but by the principal actors and theatre owners chiefly as a protection for their own theatrical property as an article of commerce'. There are no records to confirm this, but it makes the best sense of the evidence we have. Rather like the Stationers before 1586, the Admiral's and Chamberlain's Men after 1594 had established a de facto monopoly of regular London and court playing, collaborating harmoniously (as far as we can tell) with Tilney. Lord Cobham's brief tenure as Lord

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Chamberlain may well have rocked the boat, while the Isle of Dogs business erupted outside the charmed circle, with destabilising effects on the whole industry which had to be taken seriously, given the (by now) entrenched opposition of the city authorities. The Admiral's and Chamberlain's Men naturally sought to preserve their livelihood ± and an arrangement whereby they publicly submitted to Tilney's authority and licensing in return for quasi-monopoly trading conditions must have suited them very nicely. As with the Stationers, the legal framework and commercial self-interest reinforced each other perfectly. There were, of course, differences between the 1586 and 1598 situations, but some were more apparent than real. The 1598 provisions do read as though Howard and Hunsdon were taking personal advantage of their positions to protect the interests of their companies (which perhaps they were); but this is not really so different from Archbishop Whitgift convincing the Court of Star Chamber ± in reality only the Privy Council in another capacity, and he belonged to both ± to set up a system of licensing which secured a comfortable income for a dozen of his clergy, at the same time as it tied the Stationers into bonds of mutual self-interest with himself and the government as a whole. One real difference was that the Stationers determined their own membership. Although it was subject to many constraints, the acting profession had no such self-limiting mechanism. And the immediate response by those excluded under the 1598 restrictions was a determination to break into the privileged inner circle. The first to succeed were the boy companies. The Children of the Chapel had ceased commercial activities by the mid±1580s, while Paul's Boys stopped performing around 1590±1, possibly in the wake of the Martin Marprelate affair. But it has never been established what official action ± if any ± put them out of business or permitted them to restart. In the absence of evidence to the contrary it is sensible to conclude that there never was any intervention by the authorities ± that they ceased performing because demand for them tapered off (possibly as a result of increased competition from London-based adult companies in the mid±1580s), and that they started up again when the demand returned, very probably because the Privy Council's action reduced the supply of drama on offer. Their special patents as choir schools remained in force throughout, and from 1599±1600 they effectively joined the cartel of the Admiral's and Chamberlain's Men, under Tilney's authority, though official pronouncements from the Privy Council and elsewhere at this time continue to treat them as a special category, not as common players. (This was to change early in James's reign). Clearly, the Privy Council could

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have suppressed these activities if they had been determined to. The fact that they did not strongly suggests that the measures of 1598 were less a matter of clinical public policy than of collusion (reciprocal endorsement) between the agents of government and those in the profession with the resources and the patronage to negotiate privileged trading conditions. When others emerged with as persuasive a claim, the logic was to include them within the cartel rather than attempt to suppress them. The Admiral's and Chamberlain's Men were perhaps less distressed than they might otherwise have been at this infringement of their privileges, because the boys offered something distinctively different: smaller and much more expensive theatres, a niche market perhaps only marginally in competition with their own. (There was even to be collaboration between the Chamberlain's Men and Paul's Boys over Satiromastix). But the 1598 arrangement also in practice left the door open to adult companies with the right qualifications: they established certain principles, but not the definitive numbers. Actors with a noble patron could still ply their trade in the provinces: and those with sufficient resources and patronage might bid to join the inner sanctum. This is what Derby's, and subsequently Worcester's Men, did. The privileges enjoyed by Derby's Men seem to have followed an intervention by their patron, or more precisely their patron's wife, who was Robert Cecil's niece: Good uncle[,] being importuned by my Lo: to intreat your favor that his man browne with his company may not be bared from their accoustomed plaing in maintenance wher of the[y] have consumde the better part of ther substance, if so vaine a matter shall not seame troublesum to you I could desier that your furderance might be a meane to uphold them for that my Lo: taking delite in them it will kepe him from moer prodigall courses and make your credit prevaile withe him in a greater matter for my good[.] So commending my best love to you I take my leave[.] Your most loving nece E. Derbye. (Berry, p. 34) Unfortunately we cannot date this letter. But it is too much of a coincidence, given Cecil's pre-eminent position as secretary of state, that it should not to be associated with the particular favour shown to Derby's Men in the period 1599±1600. It is indisputably the case that the admission of Worcester's Men to be another of the `allowed' companies followed the intercession of the Earl

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of Oxford, still acting in effect as patron of at least part of the company. On 31 March 1602 the Privy Council wrote to the Lord Mayor, directing him to allow the new company to perform at the Boar's Head `upon noteice of her Majesties pleasure at the suit of the Earl of Oxford'. The fact is that personal intervention, either with the Queen herself, or with an individual as powerful as Cecil, was quite capable of overturning the declared policy of the Privy Council ± at least, that is, if the person making the intervention had the prestige of being a sixth (Derby) or seventeenth (Oxford) earl. Conversely, existing members of the London cartel were equally free to use their own influence to try to protect their privileges. This must surely lie behind the directive of June 1600, which confirms the Admiral's and Chamberlain's Men as the only `allowed' companies, but confines them to their `usual houses'. Again, this looks like another arbitrary restrictive whim of government, anxious to assert its control. But in reality it raises the stakes in the patronage competition, and favours those who already have an advantage. Exclusive use of a purpose-built and authorised theatre becomes a minimum condition for joining the eÂlite of the `allowed' companies. The strongest argument for this reading of events is its timing: the directive seems to have been issued as soon as The Fortune was complete. Indeed, it is the earliest evidence we have that The Fortune was ready for use.3 Thus the Admiral's Men had caught up with the Chamberlain's Men, whose Globe had been completed about a year before. The Theatre had been dismantled to create The Globe, The Rose was deteriorating and its lease running out, use of The Swan was proscribed, and one of the conditions of the 1600 directive was that The Curtain should cease to be used for playing. The boy companies had their own theatres ± Paul's Boys in the Chapter Precinct of St Paul's, while the Children of the Chapel gained the use of the Burbage's Blackfriars theatre, a measure of their difference from the adult companies. The whole situation clearly suited those in possession, and the directive merely reinforced the prerogatives of the status quo. But in this it was not totally successful. In the late summer of 1599, just as The Globe was coming into use, the Boar's Head was refurbished for the use of Derby's Men, who had hitherto been touring in the provinces (Berry, p. 34±5). This was literally just outside the City precincts, and for that reason not subject to the proscriptions that had brought the regular use of inn-yard theatres to an end within London by 1596. But the patronage which gained Derby's Men an entreÂe at court that winter presumably kept the theatre safe in June 1600. Derby himself remains a relatively shadowy figure, though he must have had

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considerable influence at court. This was the period in which his involvement with the theatres was at its most intense. It was in June 1599 that George Fenner intriguingly recorded: `Therle of Darby is busyed only in penning comedies for the common Players', and Derby also (significantly) financed the re-opening of Paul's Boys. His alliance by marriage with Cecil must have given an edge to his august title. Yet somehow this did not translate into securing his actors a permanent place among the `allowed' companies ± merely a temporary sojourn. The sticking point may well have been that Derby, for all his influence and enthusiasm, was not a Councillor ± the final hurdle built into conditions of membership in 1598. The Council itself, steered by Cecil, may tacitly have deferred to his status but denied his company formal recognition. This possibility is reinforced by what happened to those who succeeded Derby's Men at the Boar's Head and at court, but unlike them did break into the charmed circle of `allowed' companies. Oxford/Worcester's Men set up at the Boar's Head in late summer or early autumn 1601, appearing at court in January 1602. It was Worcester's name by which they were usually known ± though as late as March 1602 Oxford was still sufficiently involved with them to intercede on their behalf, possibly with the Queen herself, though more likely the Privy Council acting in her name, and Worcester was present at the relevant meeting, signing the relevant documents (Berry, pp. 51, 57). Oxford was not a Councillor, but Worcester was: he rose spectacularly as Essex fell, acquiring Essex's former post as Master of the Horse in April 1601 and being sworn into the Council that June ± just before the new company came into being. However good their relations with their patron had been (and perhaps continued to be) those of Oxford's Men who joined the new company must have known that Worcester's patronage potentially carried with it something his never could. Being Master of the Horse he was equal in status in the royal household to the Lord Admiral and Lord Chamberlain. To this extent, the admission of a third adult company to the ranks of those patronised and authorised by the royal household and Privy Council was not a change of policy, merely a widening of the circle. It finally set the seal on a competitive process of reciprocal licensing and patronage that had been turning over at least since Tilney formed the Queen's Men, but reached something like definitive form in the years 1598±1602. The taking of all of the `allowed' companies (except for Paul's Boys) into direct royal patronage may have removed a residual element of competition between the aristocrats whose liveries they had formerly worn, but in most other respects it did virtually nothing to alter the relationship between the acting

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Much of this, of course, is guesswork, trying to make the best sense of events and documents whose full context we know very imperfectly. What I want to suggest now, however, is that the theatrical community itself recognised the events of 1598±1600 (or 1602) as a watershed, something that changed their status, and their relationships with both the court and the City, in a major way. Their plays from this period keep alluding to it. There is room for debate as to what these allusions finally tell us, but their existence is hardly to be doubted. I start with The Shoemaker's Holiday, for which Henslowe paid Thomas Dekker on 15 July 1599, and these observations by R.L. Smallwood and Stanley Wells in their Revels Plays edition: In the spring of 1599, a few weeks before Dekker finished The Shoemaker's Holiday, Sir John Spencer, who had been Lord Mayor of London in 1594, had been temporarily committed to the Fleet for mistreating his only daughter Elizabeth, whose contract of marriage to the Second Lord Compton, a young courtier close to the Queen, he bitterly opposed. Spenser continued to do all in his power to hinder the match after his release. He had been an unpopular Lord Mayor ± there are records of his violent clashes with the London apprentices ± and a firm opponent of the theatres, and the affair was the subject of gossip. It is not unlikely, as Novarr suggests, that the opening scene of The Shoemaker's Holiday, with a Lord Mayor doing his best to prevent his daughter's marriage to a courtier, would have struck a familiar chord with its first audiences, and that there would have been little doubt about the direction of their sympathies. (Dekker, 1979, p. 25; see also Novarr; Stone) In the context I have been outlining, I suggest such identifications are much stronger than `not unlikely'. Dekker is crowing here over the `misfortunes' of a known opponent of the theatres ± one of those former Lord Mayors who must have been exasperated beyond measure by the 1598 developments, which effectively put the `allowed' companies beyond their grasp once and for all. We can even imagine Tilney taking pleasure in the discomfiture of one of those who (in the 1592 negotiations with Whitgift) had sought to sever his links with the public

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community and the centres of power in the country, as they had been defined over these years.4

theatres altogether: Dekker's ridicule remains just sufficiently anonymised that Spencer would have to make a fool of himself even to object to it. But there is more here than simply a `hit' at a known individual. The Shoemaker's Holiday is perhaps the classic example of the citizen comedy genre, which is commonly thought to have started in 1598 with William Haughton's Englishmen for My Money (like Dekker's, an Admiral's Men's play). As Alexander Leggatt argues, `citizen comedy may be about citizens, but it does not necessarily uphold their values, nor was it necessarily written for them as an audience' (Leggatt, p. 4). In the hands of the boy companies the genre became openly satirical, ridiculing citizens' pretensions. But in these early examples, in the hands of Haughton and Dekker, the tone is affectionate, celebrating the city, its history, traditions, locales and heroes, like Dick Whittington and Dekker's own Simon Eyre. The romanticised view of the past may cover veiled criticism of the present ± as Eyre's private munificence stands in marked contrast to the stark poor law and vagrancy legislation of the previous year. But the main thrust of such drama is to identify the theatres which stage it with the citizenry it celebrates: sharing together in the royal blessing which Dekker introduces into his play, a detail missing from Deloney and the other sources on which he draws. There had always been a side of Elizabethan theatre that put it on the fringes of respectability, its playhouses located beyond the city limits to rub shoulders with brothels and prisons, its actors classed in legislation as no better than vagrants and masterless men ± the side most clearly delineated by Steven Mullaney in The Place of the Stage.5 But Mullaney underplays the extent that there was always a confederacy between the court and the leading acting companies which counter-balanced this marginalisation. In 1598 the balance tipped conclusively in favour of those lucky enough to be the `allowed' companies, and that is what Dekker here celebrates. The theatres are no longer the city's shame, whatever its own authorities might think: they are its monuments, its places of wonder (as they clearly were to the foreign visitors who repeatedly voiced their admiration), sites on a par with John Stow's Chronicles which, in plays like this, relived its history and traditions. And the actors are no longer little better than vagabonds: they are citizens, too. This is particularly stressed in the aptness of the subjectmatter of The Shoemaker's Holiday, because cobbling is (as the play's subtitle and the Epistle to the 1600 quarto remind us) `the Gentle Craft', a title with several mythic derivations, most of them stressing the grace of

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former monarchs to practitioners of the trade, who rose in status from the association, manual labourers aspiring (almost) to gentry. This neatly parallels what has happened to the actors of the `allowed' companies (`the quality', as they were known), as Dekker is at pains to stress in the Epistle: `To all good fellows, professors of the Gentle Craft, of what degree soever. Kind gentlemen and honest boon companions, I present you here with a merry conceited comedy called The Shoemaker's Holiday, acted by my Lord Admiral's Players this present Christmas before the Queen's most excellent Majesty; for the mirth and pleasant matter by her Highness graciously accepted, being indeed no way offensive' (Dekker, 1979, p. 77). So Dekker effortlessly weaves together the citizens of London (`of what degree soever', though the emphasis is on gentlemen) and the Lord Admiral's Players, equally respectable subjects of her Majesty, equally engaged in their different `gentle crafts', which are ± an obeisance to Tilney's role ± `no way offensive', as the Queen's patronage graciously confirms. Tilney and the Admiral's Men chose shrewdly when they selected this play for court performance, since it epitomises the relationship between the court, the actors and the City of London which the 1598 provisions dictate. The other play they took to court that winter season, Old Fortunatus, again by Dekker, seems rather to look forward to the additional provisions of June 1600. In both title and theme it is a play about Fortune, who as a goddess repeatedly intercedes in the action. Given the circumstances of the play's composition, and their closeness to the building of The Fortune, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that the play would be seen in multiple senses as a celebration of the Admiral's Men's own good `fortune'. At least one play of Fortunatus existed as early as 1596 and was in the Admiral's Men's repertoire. In November 1599 Henslowe made three separate payments to Dekker in connection with a `whole history of Fortunatus', which seems to represent either a second part to the original play, or an amalgamation of two existing plays into a single new one; in either event Dekker received a total payment of £6, equivalent to the usual fee for a new play. But that is not the whole story, as Cyrus Hoy records: The day after Dekker had received final payment for the play, we find Henslowe (under the date of what he terms 31 November) advancing the dramatist the sum of £1 `for the altrenge of the boocke of the wholl history of fortewnatus'. The reason for this is contained in Henslowe's entry of 12 December, where a further sum of £2 has been paid to Dekker `for the eande of fortewnatus for the corte'. The

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This is unusual in the extreme. Firstly Henslowe pays Dekker a full fee for amending or adding to an old play, producing a text which we must assume the actors regarded as serviceable. But the very next day he engages him to rewrite the same material `for the corte', paying yet another £3, a full half-fee. Nothing exactly parallels this in Henslowe's Diary, nor is there evidence elsewhere that it was usual to amend a text as extensively as is implied here for court performance. Above all, it seems particularly odd that a text should be amended in this way before it could even be tried out on an audience. The usual assumption is that success in the theatre singled out a play for performance at court, possibly then amended under the guidance of the Master of the Revels. Here we have what amounts to the creation of a play especially ± possibly even solely ± for court performance (since Henslowe records no subsequent performances). Only Jonson's Bartholomew Fair and possibly Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor suggest themselves as comparable examples, so this was very unusual indeed ± a uniqueness compounded by being published, in what is clearly an authorised edition, only weeks after that court performance (Stationers' Register, 20 February 1600). I suggest that the only explanation for these unique circumstances must be prior knowledge, at least in court circles, that The Fortune was to be built. Roslyn Knutson argues that, since the contract for the new playhouse was not signed until 8 January, it can only have been `a happy coincidence' that the Admiral's Men's purchased `in November . . . a play with the name of their playhouse in the title', though she recognises what good publicity it would be (Knutson, 1991, p. 82). But she ignores the payments made for revision in December and the special circumstances both of the court performance and of publication. This was more than publicity ± it was the Admiral's Men basking in their new status, which was to be further confirmed in the building of the new theatre. It is in textual moments that Dekker certainly wrote for the court performance that this is most fully confirmed, as when the Goddess Fortune kneels before the Queen, acknowledging `tis most meete / That Fortune falle downe at thy conqu'ring feete' (5.2. 313±14) and the two old men who speak the Epilogue address Elizabeth as a `deere Goddesse' whom they will entreat with `praiers that we / May once a yeere so oft enjoy this sight' (Epilogue, 12±13: Old Fortunatus in Dekker,

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play was being adapted for court performance, where it was duly played before the Queen on 27 December. (Hoy, 1, p. 72)

1953±61, I). The actors acknowledge that their `Fortune' owes everything to the Queen, but hope to see their privileges confirmed in yearly court performances. Chapman's All Fools is also obsessed with Fortune, though the date and provenance of the text that has survived makes it difficult precisely to locate in relation to these concerns. Henslowe paid Chapman for a play called All Fools but the Fool or The World Runs of Wheels between January 1598 and July 1599; the play that survives was published in 1605 as `Presented at the Black Fryers, And lately before his Majesty'. E.K. Chambers argued that they were distinct plays: `the change of company raises a doubt, and there is no fool in All Fools' (Chambers, 3, p. 252). But in a play where all the characters are fools, the absence of a distinctively scripted `fool' is hardly conclusive (especially since, as I shall argue, `fooling' and acting are sometimes suggestively synonymous at this time). Moreover, the text seems to retain distinct allusions to an outdoor theatre with a `heaven' and `hell' the Blackfriars did not have (Prologus, 3±4) and a date before the turn of the century is cited in the text: `the seventeenth of November, fifteen hundred and so forth' (4.1.330: Chapman, 1968). Chapman presumably did revise the play for the Children of the Chapel, but this text seems to retain at least some earlier features. And it is here that its preoccupation with Fortune is so intriguing. One of the principal characters is called Fortunio, while the Prologus twice links Fortune with the theatre: `The fortune of a stage (like Fortune's self) / Amazeth greatest judgments . . .', `So Fortune governs in these stage events' (1±2, 33). Thereafter, the theme recurs repeatedly, most tellingly in the opening lines of both the final scenes: `I see these politicians / (Out of blind Fortune's hands) are our most fools' (3.1.114±15); `Fortune, the great commandress of the world, / Hath divers ways to advance her followers' (5.1.1±2); `We will shift rooms / To see if Fortune will shift chances with us. Sit. ladies, sit. Fortunio, place thy wench . . .' (5.2.1±3). It would, of course, be difficult to find a more common theme than Fortune in Elizabethan drama. But its very particular reiteration in this play seems pointed in a way that suggests an extratextual referent, for which the new theatre is the prime candidate. Whenever precisely this text was penned, it seems to be part of an advertising campaign for the Admiral's Men new `usual house', and so to stress the good fortune of those who are licensed to play at The Fortune. There are numerous other plays in which Fortune (and, as we shall see, Globes) are foregrounded in such a way as to suggest extra-textual referents, which must surely be the theatres. Some seem more in the spirit of rivalry rather than advertising. We may, for example, suspect something

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of this in Hamlet's badinage with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, which leads eventually to the announcement of the players' arrival: Guildenstern claims that `on Fortune's cap (Q2: `lap') we are not the very button' but Hamlet twists their answers to put them `In the secret parts of Fortune' (2.2. 218±19; 235). In the context of theatrical London c. 1600±1 (to which the text alludes repeatedly in other ways)6, that is a coded way of acknowledging them as rivals, as the enemy. I shall return to this point. For the Chamberlain's Men more generally I want firstly to turn to a play which was not new in 1598±1600 but a (presumed) revival from 1595±96. A Midsummer Night's Dream was first published in 1600 `As it hath been sundry times publickely acted, by the Right honourable, the Lord Chamberlaine his servants'. Roslyn Knutson proposes a close correlation between the publication of plays more than a year or so old, and their revival on stage, and cites this as a plausible example (1991, pp. 12± 13, 81). Certainly, if the play was revived in late 1599/early 1600, Oberon's boast ± `We the globe can compass soon / Swifter than the wand'ring moon' (4.1.94±5) ± would have had a local and topical edge to it then, albeit not as resonant as the `All the world's a stage' speech from As You Like It which Shakespeare must have penned with The Globe in mind. The possibility of a c. 1599 revival of A Midsummer Night's Dream is particularly intriguing from my perspective, since it is the only play I know where the Master of the Revels is himself brought on stage ± Philostrate in the quarto text and Egeus in the folio, respectively Theseus's `usual manager of mirth'. Strikingly, Philostrate figures much more prominently in the quarto text than (in this respect) does Egeus. In the quarto Philostrate is the one who outlines to Theseus the whole range of theatrical delights available on his wedding night and vainly attempts to prevent him having Pyramus and Thisbe performed. In the folio Egeus shares his lines with Lysander and the nature of his court post is sidelined by his plot centrality as Hermia's father. Editors of the play have (until recently) favoured the quarto version, but Barbara Hodgdon has argued to some effect that the folio is both dramatically and thematically more effective, providing a resolution of sorts to the Hermia/Egeus split which ignites the play's action (1986). What we cannot know is when the differences between the two versions emerged. The publishing sequence prompts the assumption that the folio version is a post±1600 revision, but this is far from being a necessary conclusion. I simply want to point out that the quarto version is a peculiarly apt fable for the situation of the actors in 1599±1600 ± whether it was a simple revival or revised for the occasion. As my

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colleague, Richard Wilson (1993b), has argued it is a play about very English forms of censorship, in which the class-conscious deference of the `mechanicals' compounds with their fear of giving offence to ensure a performance of utterly guileless `entertainment'. And the services of a censor are unnecessary (despite suspicions elsewhere of `satire, keen and critical') when Theseus is determined that `never anything can be amiss, / When simpleness and duty tender it' (5.1.54, 82±3). By subscribing to this formula the Chamberlain's servants are indeed `made men', secure in their `sixpence a day' so long as they submit to Philostrate/ Tilney's authority. The common assumption that Shakespeare's play, like that of his `mechanicals', was meant to celebrate an aristocratic wedding has long overshadowed the documented fact that it `hath been sundry times publickely acted' ± and so that it is a perfect allegory of relations between the acting companies and the court. The 1600 version, with its emphasis on Philostrate and his role, particularly mirrors Tilney's enhanced role as overseer of the `allowed' companies from that time. I want to argue, however, that the events of 1598±1600 left a much more substantial mark on the Chamberlain's Men than the in-jokes of this one play. They coincide with the single most significant change in their personnel during Shakespeare's career with them ± the loss of Will Kempe and his replacement by Robert Armin. Despite the apparent residue of mutual ill-will in Kempe's gibes at `my notable Shakerags' (in the `humble request' to his Nine Days' Wonder) and Hamlet's haughty strictures to `those that play your clowns' it is far from clear why, or indeed when, Kempe actually left. He signed the lease for, and so became a shareholder in, The Globe in February 1599. David Wiles argues that he had left the company by the autumn, partly because `there is no obvious clown part in Julius Caesar, which was in performance by September' (p. 36). But what is the business of the Poet who tries to reconcile Brutus and Cassius, and is dismissed by the former with impatience at `jigging fools' (4.3.137), if it is not an opportunity for one of Kempe's trade-mark jigs? Even the famous Nine Day's Morris to Norwich in February±March 1600 is not evidence that he had left the company, since it took place when the theatres were closed for Lent anyway; and though the published account of it (Stationers' Register 22 April that year) may register ill-will, it is not so abusive as to be categorical evidence that Kempe and Shakespeare were no longer working together. The fact is that we do not know when Kempe actually left. We do know that he was with Worcester's Men by March 1602 (when Henslowe advanced him a loan) and so may well have been involved in the reformation of that company late in 1601. I have dwelled on this at some

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34 Licensing, Censorship and Authorship

length because, to be honest, I wanted to find a causal connection between the developments of 1598±1600 and Kempe's leaving; but I have not done so. I toyed with a scenario in which Kempe's partly impromptu jigs no longer seemed safe in the repertoire of the `allowed' companies, so his colleagues engineered his departure in order to make way for Armin as a player `wise enough to play the fool', and discreet enough to do so comfortably within Tilney's rules. But the evidence is not there: all we know is that he left the Chamberlain's Men and joined Worcester's, but not before they too were an `allowed' company. Such as it is, the evidence supports Wiles's conclusion that it was `professional differences' (p. 36) that led Kempe to leave, rather than either personalities or the new framework of control. Jigs do seem to have continued to flourish in the theatres north of the city (with their citizen repertories) rather than in those south of the river. So Armin's coming may not have been a planned replacement for Kempe. Indeed, they may have overlapped in the company. The witty cobbler who bandies words with the Tribunes at the opening of Julius Caesar has all the hall-marks of an Armin role, very different from the jigging Poet. What seems indisputable is that, quite early on in his association with the Chamberlain's Men, Armin became somehow associated with their new status as an `allowed' company, and that this was semi-formalised in his `licensed fool' roles. Wiles (p. 145) identifies seven of these between 1599 and 1605, mainly but not exclusively written by the company's resident playwright: Touchstone (As You Like It, c. 1599), Carlo Buffone (Every Man Out of His Humour, 1599), Feste (Twelfth Night, c. 1601), Thersites (Troilus and Cressida, c. 1601±2), Lavatch (All's Well That Ends Well, c. 1602±3), Passarello (The Malcontent, c. 1604) and the Fool (King Lear, c. 1605±6). There were, of course, numerous other roles which shared some characteristics with these ± Wiles identifies various `orthodox clown parts and `latent clown parts' (pp. 150±1) ± but the `licensed fools' are particularly resonant precisely because their recurrent identity mirrors that of the acting profession as a whole. With the exception of Buffone, they are all servants of aristocrats and all uniquely licensed to speak their minds and not give offence (or be shielded from harm if they do give offence ± the whip is invoked more than once, but never actually used). That is what the 1598 provisions established for the actors in the `allowed' companies, with Tilney empowered to convey that licence. In all of these roles, therefore, Armin invokes a metadramatic dimension, a reminder of the precise rules ± social and political, as well as aesthetic ± under which the actors are allowed to `hold a mirror up to nature'.

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Even though the role and its conventions must have become a familiar one, Shakespeare in particular goes out of his way to write in the specific fact of `licence'. So Olivia, defending Feste, reminds us all that `There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail' (1.5.89± 91); Lafeu describes Lavatch as `A shrewd knave and an unhappy', to which the Countess replies: `So a is. My Lord that's gone made himself much sport out of him; by his authority he remains here, which he thinks a patent for his sauciness, and indeed he has no pace but runs where he will' (4.5.63±7); Achilles has to remind Patroclus about the fool he `inveigled' from Ajax: `He is a privileged man. Proceed, Thersites'; Goneril famously complains to Lear of `your all-licensed fool' (folio, 1.4.183), who is threatened with the whip but never actually suffers it. In each of these instances there are reasons within the action of the play itself why the issue should be raised. But its familiarity becomes so foregrounded as always to have extra-textual reference ± which can often be linked to the wider status of the actors: their licensed cartel and their incessant rivalry within it. Lavatch's position in All's Well, for example, sets him up for a virtuoso broadside on Fortune, which can only be a slandering of the rival house (`Truly, Fortune's displeasure is but sluttish . . .' 5.2.3±34).7 Feste's position in Twelfth Night is particularly suggestive. He entertains the aristocrats in Illyria (usually by wittily ridiculing them to their faces), with a shrewd professionalism which insists above all on payment for his `pains'. What is never fully explained is the streak of vindictive cruelty that runs through his treatment of Malvolio. Their mutual antagonism is established early on, but within the play Feste suffers no more at Malvolio's hands than do Toby, Andrew, Fabian and Maria. Yet when they tire of the trick played on him ± indeed, begin to worry that it has gone too far ± Feste persists in his `exorcism', arguably taking the play beyond the confines of comedy. And his mockery persists to the very end, denying the play the all-inclusive resolution it so nearly achieves. Malvolio the `puritan' is, of course, the antithesis of the `cakes and ale' world which is Feste's natural habitat, and it is easy enough to see this as a Lent/Carnival alternation in which for once ± and for now ± Carnival gets the upper hand. But this does not entirely square with what I have called Feste's professionalism: he is not responsible for the topsy-turveydom in Illyria, which derives from the self-indulgent aristocrats he serves. It is, rather, the condition of his trade: a world not dominated by self-love, misplaced grief and scrounging would have no time or appetite for the `entertainment' he provides. A world in which Malvolio ruled would deny Feste an economic or legal existence, removing the

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licence of the `allowed' fool because it would serve the interests of nobody who mattered. In these senses, like The Shoemaker's Holiday, Twelfth Night contains its riposte to those who would have closed down the theatres altogether. Feste's position as the `licensed' fool exactly mirrors that of the `allowed' actors who have survived that threat. The closing lines of his closing song acknowledge this, as he openly becomes their spokesman: `our play is done, / And we'll strive to please you every day' (5.1.403±4). Strikingly, though not untypically, it is neither Shakespeare nor the Chamberlain's Men who most fully articulate the special status of the licensed fool: it is Marston in Antonio's Revenge (1600). The hero, Antonio, disguises himself as a fool: Antonio No, this coxcomb is a crown Which I affect, even with unbounded zeal. Alberto `Twill thwart your plot, disgrace your high resolve. Antonio By wisdom's heart, there is no essence mortal That I can envy, but a plump-cheeked fool. O, he hath a patent of immunities, Confirmed by custom, sealed by policy, As large as spacious thought. Alberto You cannot press among the courtiers And have access toAntonio What! Not a fool? Why, friend, a golden ass, A baubled fool are sole canonical . . . (4.1.9±19) This was for Paul's Boys, but there is ample evidence that Marston has Armin and The Globe squarely in his sights. Balurdo, the play's `true' fool, says `Truth is the touchstone of all things' (1.3. 16±17, my emphasis), and there is endless playing (c.f. `a golden ass') on Armin's formal standing as a goldsmith ± an association which gave a particular edge to his `touchstone' part. The pretensions of the new Globe (or `world') are put derisively into perspective by Antonio's `little toy of walnut shell and soap to make bubbles' (SD, head of 4.1.): `Puff! hold, world! Puff! hold, bubble! Puff! hold, world!' (4.2.28±9). This is all good-natured fun, and there is much more of it (see, for example, 4.2.30±53, where a `fresh unsalted fool' is preferred to `These vinegar-tart spirits'). But behind it Marston sees the key professional point: the licensed fool has `a patent of immunities . . . sealed by policy / As large as spacious thought'. The customary licence of an individual

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fool, like Will Summers at the court of Henry VIII, had become a matter of `patent' and `policy' for the `allowed' actors who adopted its mantle under Tilney's authority. In practice, of course, this includes Paul's Boys, though Marston is hardly going to spoil a good joke by being so evenhanded. The privileges of the adult companies, at least for the time being, were a much more public issue. We probably see here some of the seeds of the so-called War of the Theatres, where the `allowance' of the various parties and their standing at court is very much an issue. In Poetaster Jonson was to accuse the adult actors, Histrio and Aesop (linked with `your Globes' [3.4.201] and so with the Chamberlain's Men), of political connivance; they make accusations against both Ovid and Horace, for which Aesop is promised `a monopoly of playing, confirm'd to thee and thy covey, under the Emperor's broad seal, for this service' (5.3.123±5). Part of Jonson's concern is undoubtedly that the cartel restricted his freedom as a writer to sell his plays on a free market. Conversely, Dekker in Satiromastix accuses Jonson of sour grapes, implying that his complaint against the cartel really boiled down to the fact that he did not control it himself, being anxious to `beget . . . the reversion of the Master of the King's Revels' (4.1.189±90: see Chapter 6 `Jonson: Epistle to Volpone'). The self-reflection of actors and playwrights on their privileged position did not end with the War of the Theatres, but rumbled on with modulations. Henry Chettle, the most prolific of the writers who figure in Henslowe's Diary and therefore an interesting test-case even though so little of his work has survived, produces a novel twist in The Tragedy of Hoffman (c. 1603), where the truly foolish prince, Jerome, talks to the fool-proper, Stilt, of writing a poem `in praise of picktooths': `I'll get a patent from the Duke, my father, for the cum privilegio for that poem ad imprimendum solum; besides, thou shalt have a privilege, that no man shall sell toothpicks without thy seal' (1.4.420±6). Chettle was a printer by trade and the cum privilegio was the royal licence for the exclusive printing rights to a work, a parallel from the print world to the `sealed' status of the actors and their works.8 And when Marston (if it was him) wrote the additions to The Malcontent for its performance by the King's Men, which included the creation of an entire fool-role for Armin, his emphases were rather different from those in Antonio's Revenge. One of Passarello's chief refrains is on the velvet he now wears as a courtier, though he is no less a servant than ever he was; but he is very much in demand there ± `the court cannot possibly be without me' (1.8.61±2) ± as indeed are his fellows, since his lord `keeps beside me fifteen jesters to instruct him in the art of fooling' (45±6). This is surely

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another direct equation of the licensed fool with the actors in general, here the whole company of the King's Men who with Armin have become indispensable appendages of the king's own household: velvetclad servants, their licence so taken for granted it is scarcely necessary to mention it.9 Of course, Goneril does mention it, quite venomously, in the last of Armin's true `licensed fool' roles; it is painfully appropriate that he sings the very last snatch of Feste's `When that I was and a little tiny boy' out on the heath as Lear's `wit begins to turn', since we must understand that one consequence (a small, but not inconsiderable consequence) of the collapse of Lear's rule is the end of theatre itself. In a world where Edmund's Nature reigns, there is no place for licensed fools. The loyalty of Lear's Fool to his royal master is touching, but perhaps also inescapable. Just as Feste knows that Malvolio represents a threat to the entire privileged courtly world of licensed fooling, the Fool seems to know that without Lear he is (like Lear himself) nothing. Each depends on the other (in a prophetic vision down to 1642) for his essential validation. Rather less fancifully, it may well be that the exasperation with Lear's `all-licensed fool' echoes the widely-voiced complaints about the liberties taken by one acting company in particular, the Children of the Queen's Revels, who for a time became the only `allowed' company not subject to Tilney's authority, when Queen Anne appointed her own licenser, Samuel Daniel.10 Scandal after scandal beset the company: Daniel's own Philotas (1604), Chapman, Jonson and Marston's Eastward Ho (1605), Day's Isle of Gulls (1606), Chapman's Byron plays (1608), and others besides, even after we assume Daniel was removed from office. Roslyn Knutson's argument (1995) that the `little eyases' passage in the folio Hamlet [2.2.337±62] is a late addition, aimed at this company at this time, rather than in 1600±1 as has traditionally been supposed, is entirely convincing. The Blackfriars boys, with their reckless satire, were in danger not only of `the whip' themselves but of rocking the boat for the rest of the cartel as well. Shakespeare's earlier wry comedy about `the private parts of Fortune' has progressed to something more serious: `Will they not say afterwards . . . their writers do them wrong, to make them exclaim against their own succession?' (2.2.347±51). Licence is never without limits, and Shakespeare obliquely voices concern about the future of the `allowance' essentially contracted in 1598. In fact the threat posed by the `little eyases' faded after 1608, and the `licensed fool' role seems to have passed into history, as the actors grew accustomed to its reality ± the reality scornfully expressed by John Cocke, in his `character' of `A Common Player' (1615), that `players

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Licensed Fools 39

may not be called rogues: For they bee chiefe ornaments of his Majesties Revells' (Chambers, 4, pp. 255±7). There continued to be stage fools, of course, including notable ones like the dramatist William Rowley, who (for example) wrote the role of Lollio for himself in his collaboration with Thomas Middleton, The Changeling (1622), while Middleton wrote the role of the Fat Bishop as a late addition for him in A Game at Chess (1624). In the former there is some ironic play on the fact that Lollio threatens the fools and madmen of the asylum he oversees with a whip, standing on its head the vulnerability of an Armin-style fool. But the greatest comic capital in both roles derives from Rowley's enormous size, rather than his licensed wit (Dutton, 1999, xxvi±xxvii). It is a measure of how assured the most privileged actors felt of their allotted place in the late Jacobean scheme of things (an assurance reflected in A Game at Chess and perhaps taken too much for granted with The Spanish Viceroy).11 And it is a far cry from that moment in 1597 when the total eradication of the theatres seemed to be on the cards.

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Obscenity and Profanity: Sir Henry Herbert's Problems with the Players and Archbishop Laud, 1632±34

What remains of Sir Henry Herbert's office-book is one of the indispensable points of departure for anyone interested in the dramatic censorship of the whole early modern period: for the simple reason that virtually nothing has survived from the office-books of his principal predecessors as Master of the Revels, Edmond Tilney and Sir George Buc.1 Yet the gravitational pull of Shakespeare and his immediate contemporaries remains so strong in the study of the period's drama that Herbert is almost always called upon as a bit player rather than a major character. So it is that both Janet Clare's `Art made tongue-tied by authority' (1990) and my own Mastering the Revels (1991) frequently invoke Herbert's example, even though we both confine our studies to the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, ending virtually as his term of office was beginning. For the most part (and despite Herbert's own stated view `that in former time the poetts tooke greater liberty than is allowed them by mee', which I shall consider shortly), we both followed general precedent in assuming that Herbert's standards and practices were broadly comparable with those of his predecessors. In all this the occasion never arose to take an overview of Herbert's own career, or to consider how some of the entries in his office-book might have reflected very specific or local circumstances. This essay aims partly to rectify that omission. There was, indeed, a brief overview of the career in the edition of Herbert's papers which both Clare and I used, that by John Quincy Adams (1917). And there is now a much more substantial overview in N.W. Bawcutt's invaluable The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama: The Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, 1623±73 (1996: i.e. Herbert). Yet neither Adams nor Bawcutt has anything to say about the sequence or specific circumstances of entries in the office-book, though both in fact offer chronological listings of those entries relating to 41

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censorship (Adams, pp. 18±23; Herbert, pp. 51±3). In particular, neither of them comments on the unusual sequence of circumstances and entries that runs from November 1632 to January 1634. Adams actually comments that: `As Master of the Revels, Herbert experienced no serious difficulties until 1642' (p. 9). I suggest, on the contrary, that this period must have been a particularly fraught one for him. Several of the fullest (and most often quoted) entries that he ever seems to have made in his office-book have survived from that period, revealing tensions with actors and dramatists alike. These repeatedly focus on `oaths, prophaness, and ribaldrye' or `obsceanes', which Bawcutt follows general practice in regarding as Sir Henry's characteristic concern for moral propriety. This too seems to me to warrant further investigation.

1632±34 The survival of these entries (and the implicit narrative they convey) may be fortuitous, given the haphazard manner in which the contents of the office-book have been passed down to us ± a process admirably summarised by Bawcutt (pp. 13±26). Yet they differ in kind from most of what else has survived, in a way that suggests they were special. In particular, they are written with an eye to being read by other people, explaining and justifying Sir Henry's judgement and actions. It seems almost as if his competence and conduct were being called into question, or at least that he feared they might be. At all events, the five key items are: Herbert's record of taking it `ill' when he discovered that in the production of James Shirley's The Ball `ther were divers personated so naturally, both of lords and others of the court' (18 November 1632; Herbert, p. 177); his praise of Shirley's The Young Admiral (3 July 1633; Herbert, p. 180); a sequence of entries relating to his refusal to allow the King's Men to perform John Fletcher's old play, The Tamer Tamed, or The Woman's Prize, without re-licensing (18±24 October 1633; Herbert, pp. 182±3); his record of a judgement in the Court of High Commission about Ben Jonson's play, The Magnetic Lady (24 October 1633; Herbert, pp. 184); and an account of his troubles over the censorship of oaths in William Davenant's The Wits, which was only resolved by referring the matter to King Charles himself (9 January 1634; Herbert, pp. 186). While nothing formally links the five items, there are certain continuities, and these are what I want particularly to explore. The narrative really begins with the fourth item, since it takes us back to 12 October 1632, when Herbert licensed The Magnetic Lady (Herbert, p. 176). There is nothing in the entry as it survives to suggest that Herbert had any

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qualms about licensing it, or that he required any changes in it. Yet we know that by the following month it had become a matter for the Court of High Commission, one of the highest ecclesiastical courts, in effect controlled (given the enfeebled state of Archbishop Abbot) by William Laud, then Bishop of London. In a letter of 17 November 1632, Sir John Pory reported to Sir John Scudamore: `The Players of the Black fryers were on Thursday called before the high Commission at Lambeth, and were then bound over to answere such articles as should be objected against them. And it is said to be for uttring some prophane speaches in abuse of Scripture and wholly thinges, which they found penned, for them to act and playe, in Ben Jonsons newe comedy called the Magnetique lady' (Herbert, p. 176, note). In Herbert's only surviving note on this, from the following October, he observed: `In their [i.e. the players'] first petition they would have excused themselves on me and the poett', which perhaps fleshes out Pory's `thinges, which they found penned, for them to act and playe'. That is, the actors claimed that they only performed what Jonson had written and Herbert had allowed. Herbert's note follows a second petition `wherein they [the players] did mee right in my care to purge their plays of all offense'. We may perhaps infer that the actors had originally argued that Herbert had been lax in his censorship of Jonson's play, letting through the `prophane speaches' which they had then performed in all innocence. By October 1633 they had changed their tune, attesting (at least in general terms) to Herbert's `care' in these matters, which was sufficient to satisfy the court, and `my lords Grace of Canterbury bestowed many words upon mee, and discharged mee of any blame'. Laud was by then Archbishop of Canterbury, Abbot having died. This was not, in fact, Herbert's only run-in with Laud. Between June 1632 and January 1633 (a period which strikingly overlaps with the The Magnetic Lady affair) Herbert started licensing non-dramatic texts for the press. And he quickly ran into trouble over this, being taken to task by the Court of Star Chamber (in effect the Privy Council sitting in a judicial capacity) for licensing Donne's Paradoxes and Problems: `Ordered that Sr Hen Herbert give accompt to the board on [thursday] fryday to give accompt (sic) why hee warranted the booke of D.Dons paradoxes to bee printed. By the kings command delivered by the Bishop of London' (Herbert, p. 177). Laud as Bishop of London oversaw the whole process of licensing for print. Herbert had issued this licence on 24 October 1632, and the Star Chamber order was made on 14 November ± at almost exactly the same time as The Magnetic Lady became a High Commission matter. We do not know why the Court of Star Chamber became

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involved, or what its findings were, but various explanations suggest themselves. There is no evidence that Herbert was given new authority for licensing these texts, and he may well have been speculatively attempting to expand the income from his existing powers ± an attempt that others resisted. There could equally have been problems about the ownership of the Donne text, or objections to its subject matter. We know nothing more than this about the whole matter, though it is apparent that Herbert also had difficulties with his licensing of Donne's poems and of a collection of poems and plays by Fulke Greville, and abandoned licensing non-dramatic texts altogether in January 1633 (Herbert, p. 48±9). But none of this can have eased the tension Herbert must have been under in his dealings with the actors. Martin Butler has written at length on The Magnetic Lady affair, and I agree with him on most particulars, including his identification of the likely `prophane speaches' (or what survives of them) and his observation of how unusual it was that an ecclesiastical court should have been involved and especially one as senior as the High Commission: `The intervention of the High Commission court is a most unusual circumstance which can probably be taken to indicate that the offense was of a graver nature than the use of oaths and that the players were deemed to have trespassed on some points of doctrine or discipline offensive to the church hierarchy' (Butler, 1992, p. 472). He also notes how long the whole affair dragged on, but says nothing about the fact of a second petition from the players, which certainly indicates that testimony was changed and may indicate that there were in fact two judgements in the affair, the one Herbert records reversing an earlier one. Butler's whole perspective, in fact, is on the problems posed to the players by the fact of a second (and potentially more serious) line of censorship, beyond the usual attentions of the Master of the Revels. He asks why it should be that a play that seems broadly sympathetic to the Laudian view of the Church of England should be subject to this level of scrutiny and argues `that the censoring authorities could be nervous even about small details, and that the broadening of the canons of acceptability inevitably involved a significant element of risk' (p. 481). What Butler does not address is the position of the Master of the Revels in all this, who seems to be incorporated here in an undifferentiated category of `censoring authorities'. The fact is that, if the Court of High Commission had accepted the players' first version of events (as they may for a time have done), this would have reflected badly on Herbert's performance of his duties: either by incompetence or laziness he had licensed a text which he should not

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have done. Precisely what the consequences of this for Herbert might have been I cannot say, because there is no parallel instance of anything like this happening. Clearly he continued to perform his duties. Yet his palpable relief about the final outcome suggests that he felt compromised by the whole business. By a peculiar irony, the whole episode must have thrown a double shadow over the Revels Office, because the actors' first version of events impugned Jonson, the author, as well as Herbert. And Jonson at this date held the first reversion to the post of Master of the Revels: Sir John Astley was still technically the incumbent of the office, which Herbert had bought from him in July 1623, and were he to die before Jonson then the dramatist would have supplanted Herbert (Dutton, 1991, p. 220). The intervention of the High Commission must have been an extreme embarrassment to both of them: satisfaction and relief both seem to figure in Herbert's record of the final verdict, with Laud's `many words', Herbert's total exoneration, and the fault laid wholly on the players. But what can Herbert's relations with the King's Men have been like between November 1632 and October 1633? Either they knew (as they originally told the court) that he had failed in his responsibility, so exposing all concerned to higher scrutiny; or he knew that they had changed the text in some way after he licensed it, introducing the `prophane speaches' which caused the problem, and then compounded the offence by blaming this on Jonson and himself. It cannot have made for ideal working relations. We also have to ask what caused the actors to change their testimony in the second petition. A long-term view of prudent self-interest ± whether prompted by Herbert or otherwise ± may have suggested to the King's Men that (whatever the facts of the case) they had more to lose from any loss of face to the Master of the Revels, and from any continuing ill-will on his part, than they had from admitting guilt. Whatever precisely had happened over The Magnetic Lady, we can surely see why Herbert reacted as he did to the performance of The Ball. This was (to square Pory's account of the former with Herbert's of the latter) within a week of the earlier case going to the High Commission, and only days after the Star Chamber had queried his licensing of Donne's Paradoxes. This was a different company (Queen Henrietta Maria's), yet what they were doing undermined the authority of the Master of the Revels every bit as much as what the King's Men had accused him of in their first petition to the court. He had licensed the play quite normally on 16 November, then two days later found an apparently innocent script translated into topical satire by the use of naturalistic

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disguises. He `would have forbidden the play, but that Biston promiste many things which I found faulte withall should be left out, and that he would not suffer it to be done by the poett any more, who deserves to be punisht; and the first that offends in this kind, of poets or players, shall be sure of publique punishment' (Herbert, p. 177). Interestingly, Herbert here colludes with the company's manager, Christopher Beeston, in putting the blame on the dramatist, Shirley, in such a way as to absolve the management, the players and himself as Master of the Revels. Possibly Shirley was one of those dramatists who coached the players in a quasi-directorial role, and so was expected to carry primary responsibility for such infringements.2 Yet quite how the Queen's Men could don topical disguises without bearing some responsibility for the fact (any more than the King's Men could innocently voice `prophane speaches') is one of the minor mysteries of this episode. But it is consistent with the usual symbiosis between the actors and their licenser, in that they had mutual selfinterest in staying in business, and `the poett' might be a convenient scapegoat (as the originator of transgression, either as author or director) when that self-interest was threatened. We notice, however, the quasipublic flourish with which Herbert concludes, threatening `publique punishment' for whoever next offends in this way, `of poets or players' (my emphasis). What is so unusual about the King's Men's first petition over The Magnetic Lady is precisely that it threatened that symbiotic selfinterest, possibly because Jonson was astute enough not to allow himself to be separately scapegoated (his experience with Eastward Ho years before had shown him the danger of not having a proper licence) or possibly because everyone concerned had panicked over the intervention of this ominously powerful higher authority. We may wonder whether the apparent scapegoating of Shirley here had any bearing on the next item, albeit some seven months later: `The comedy called The Yonge Admirall, being free from oaths, prophaness, or obsceanes, hath given mee much delight and satisfaction in the readinge, and may serve for a patterne to other poetts, not only for the bettring of maners and language, but for the improvement of the quality [i.e. the actors], which hath received some brushings of late'. Herbert goes on to express the hope that his approbation will encourage Shirley `to pursue his beneficial and cleanly way of poetry' and concludes `I have entered this allowance, for direction to my successor, and for example to all poetts, that shall write after the date hereof' (Herbert, p. 180). It is an extraordinary gesture by Herbert, and one that contributes strongly (in its emphasis on the avoidance of `oaths, prophaness, or obsceanes') to a

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view of him as a man almost obsessively fastidious about casual profanity and matters of sexual decency, as Bawcutt observes (p. 75). But Bawcutt also notes the reference to `some brushings of late' received by the actors, which widens the frame of reference: `it must mean something like ``dressing down'', ``severe rebuke'', and the most plausible explanation is that Herbert had in mind Prynne's monumental Histriomastix' (ibid ). Herbert may have been thinking of Prynne's exhaustive attack on plays and players, but would he tacitly endorse a work which had already placed its author in the Tower for its supposed attacks on the King and Queen, and would eventually lose him his ears? It is equally plausible that Herbert was thinking of his own dressing down of Shirley and the Queen's Men for The Ball, and indeed the intervention of the High Commission over The Magnetic Lady, which was still unresolved business at this time. Whichever way we look, however, the figure of William Laud ± whom Prynne regarded as his chief persecutor ± is always ominously in the background. For this reason it is helpful to think of the prosecution of The Magnetic Lady, Prynne's Histriomastix and Herbert's repeated objection to `oaths' and `prophaness' in the same frame of reference. Martin Butler has convincingly argued that the provocation of the former related to its discussion (however sympathetic) of the Arminian tendencies in Laud's Church of England; these same tendencies (construed as cryptoCatholicism) are similarly at the heart of Prynne's insistent pamphlet campaign against the court, of which Histriomastix is only a substantial chapter. The translation of the Church hierarchy as it had been under Elizabeth and James from a broadly Calvinist alliance (with occasional exceptions like Richard Bancroft and Samuel Harsnett) to a broadly Arminian one under Charles was one of the most marked features of the latter's Personal Rule, and one that fired considerable opposition. The fact that Henrietta Maria was also allowed to practise her own Roman Catholicism openly, and that she was thought to be promoting the conversion of members of the court (not excluding other members of the royal family) to her faith, only compounded the religious tensions of the time. Although there is evidence that Herbert was strict about oaths throughout his tenure of office ± he re-licensed The Winter's Tale in 1623 on the assurance of John Heminges `that there was nothing profane added or reformed' (Herbert, p. 142) ± his policing of `oaths' and `prophaness' at this point in the 1630s becomes insistent. This may indeed speak to his personal piety, but I suggest that it primarily speaks to the heightened religious tensions around the court and the dangers first signalled by The Magnetic Lady affair.

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Leaving aside for the moment The Woman's Prize, profanity was undoubtedly the key issue in respect of the last of the special entries I am considering, concerning The Wits: `This morning, being the 9th of January, 1633[4], the kinge was pleasd to call me into his withdrawinge chamber to the window, wher he went over all that I had croste in Davenants play-booke, and allowing if faith and slight to bee asseverations only, and no oathes, markt them to stande, and some other few things, but in the greater part allowed of my reformations . . . The kinge is pleasd to take faith, death, slight, for asseverations, and no oaths, to which I doe humbly submit as my masters judgment; but under favour conceive them to be oaths, and enter them here, to declare my opinion and submission' (Herbert, p. 186). Masters of the Revels had been required since the 1606 Act of Abuses to prevent the use of blasphemous language on stage, and the surviving manuscripts censored by both Buc and Herbert show them both to have been alert to this, if not painstakingly punctilious. Often it seems that a few exemplary corrections were meant to indicate to the actors that they expected them to amend other blasphemies themselves, a sign of the working understanding which normally existed between the actors and their licenser. That working understanding seems to have broken down here, and while Davenant's access to court influence may explain how the matter was resolved, it does not explain Herbert's apparently intensified concern about `oaths' and `prophaness', which runs through all the items we are considering. In the uncertain religious climate, Herbert seems determined to be safe rather than sorry. While Butler is almost certainly right that something `of a graver nature than the use of oaths' was at issue in respect of The Magnetic Lady, oaths in themselves have acquired a more contentious status in this climate. We are now in a position to appreciate the context of Herbert's reaction to the staging of The Tamer Tamed, or The Woman's Prize. The sequence of events was this: on Friday 18 October, Herbert `sent a warrant by a messenger of the chamber to suppress The Tamer Tamd, to the King's players, for the afternoone, and it was obeyd; upon complaints of foule and offensive matters conteyned therein. They acted The Scornful Lady instead of it'; `On saterday morninge followinge the book was brought mee, and at my lord of Hollands request I returned it to the players ye monday morninge after, purged of oaths, prophaness, and ribaldrye, being ye 21 of Octob. 1633'; the book went back with a note to Edward Knight, bookkeeper to the King's Men: `In many things you have saved mee labour; yet wher your judgment or penn fayld you, I have been boulde to use mine. Purge ther parts, as I have the booke'.

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Herbert goes on to insist (`as you will answer it at your perill') that he never again wants to receive playbooks that have not been purged of `oaths, prophaness, and publique ribaldry' (Herbert, pp. 182±3). Herbert's action in stopping a performance which was at an advanced stage of preparation `hath raysed some discourse in the players, though no disobedience', so much so that he inserted in his office-book at this point a letter from December 1624, signed by all the sharers in the King's Men, admitting their guilt in staging a play called The Spanish Viceroy without Herbert's licence, submitting to his authority and promising not to do it again. Herbert added in the margin `'Tis entered here for a remembrance against their disorders'. His last entry in relation to this matter reads: `The 24 Octob. 1633, Lowins and Swanston were sorry for their ill manners, and craved my pardon, which I gave them in presence of Mr. Taylor and Mr Benfeilde' (ibid.). All of those mentioned were senior members of the King's Men. The actors had apparently planned to revive the play (probably written around 1610±11) under its old licence, dating from George Buc's time, which would have been normal practice so long as they still held their `allowed copy'. I have already mentioned Herbert's re-licensing of The Winter's Tale in 1623: while he sought assurances about profanity, the most striking feature of that transaction is that he took the state of the text (the `allowed copy' having been lost) entirely on John Heminges's word, and took no fee for it. On the basis of his practice hitherto Herbert should only have been involved over The Woman's Prize if the allowed copy was missing, if alterations or additions had been made to the text, or if the licence had been transferred from one company to another, and in those circumstances he would receive little or no fee (Dutton, 1991, pp. 94±5). Apparently none of those conditions pertained. But something about this particular revival stung Herbert so much that he peremptorily stopped the performance and put it on record `that it concernes the Master of the Revells to bee carefull of their ould revived playes, as of their new, since they may conteyne offensive matter', avowing `that in former time the poetts tooke greater liberty than is allowed them by mee' (Herbert, p. 183). Because of this he now felt he ought to re-license all old plays that were revived, and have his full fee for doing so. The question is: what was so different about this play that Herbert reacted as he did, making the whole matter a test of his authority over the actors, and causing him to rethink his practices ten years after he first came into office? His surviving notes mention only `complaints of foule and offensive matters conteyned therein' and the trio of `oaths,

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prophaness, and ribaldrye' (also mentioned in the note to Knight, and reminiscent of the `oaths, prophaness, or obsceanes' he was so pleased not to find in The Young Admiral ), on which his censorship had focused. But his argument about the need for old plays to be re-licensed suggests more gravely that (given his predecessors' more relaxed standards) `they may be full of offensive things against church and state'. We do not know who made the complaints about The Woman's Prize or in what circumstances, but either the play had been performed before Herbert heard of it, or rumours of what the actors were planning must have leaked out. What can hardly be in dispute is that Herbert's actions (and the King's Men's responses) must have been partly governed by the impending judgement of the Court of High Commission over The Magnetic Lady. Herbert received his apology from John Lowin and Elyard Swanston over their `discourse' and `ill manners' on the very day that the High Commission gave its ruling, vindicating Herbert. This may, of course, be coincidence and it would be pure speculation to suppose that one directly influenced the other. Nevertheless, these two matters together represent the most serious recorded breakdown of relations between a Master of the Revels and the actors he licensed. The Spanish Viceroy affair (1624) must also have occasioned a major rift. But it is interesting that Herbert recorded nothing of it in his office-book at the time, and only now inserted the letter of contrition and submission he had exacted from the King's Men. This reinforces the sense of crisis underlying Herbert's entries around 1633 and the element of quasipublic self-justification in them. It seems reasonable to conclude that Herbert felt his very authority to be in question on more than one front, and that his rigorous action against the performance of The Woman's Prize (and his careful recording of it) was informed by that concern. We are already, I suggest, in a position to offer a provisional assessment of Herbert's motivations here: given the challenges to his authority variously represented by The Magnetic Lady and The Ball, the staging of an old play without re-licensing (not unlike provocative disguisings after a play had been licensed) exposed areas of his responsibility where his control was actually minimal and relied heavily on the good will of the actors. And, in these circumstances, that could not be taken for granted as perhaps once it had been. Given his reiterated insistence on `oaths' and `prophaness' we might also hazard a guess that this play, too, was particularly suspect in the current religious climate, and that this further informed his punctiliousness. But before pursuing these suspicions in relation to the text of The Woman's Prize itself, and its apparent censorship, I want to give some

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consideration to the third part of Herbert's formula, in addition to `oaths' and `prophaness' ± what in relation to The Young Admiral he calls `obsceanes' and in relation to The Woman's Prize `ribaldrye'. Here again this is usually taken at face value as evidence that Herbert had a quasi-modern fastidiousness about sexual matters for their own sake, an abhorrence of obscenity that paralleled his objections to blasphemy, such that Bawcutt can talk of `Sir Henry acting more often as a censor of morality than of politics' (p. 73). I suggest that, as with `oaths', the issue is more complicated than that.

Early modern obscenity Concerning `ribaldrye' in The Woman's Prize itself, Bawcutt observes that the play's `explicit sexuality would undoubtedly have offended Herbert. The Woman's Prize contains so many double meanings that to remove them all would destroy the play. No attempt was made to do so, but a number of grosser obscenities were removed' (p. 61). Is it really true that `explicit sexuality would undoubtedly have offended Herbert', and if so, why? Why should he have been more offended by it than his predecessors, Tilney and Buc (or indeed the clerical licensers for the press contemporary with them), who had licensed a good deal of material just as obscene ± including, of course, this play. The issue is one of wider significance in the histories of censorship, because it is far from clear that matters of sexual taste and decency had any bearing on the formal censorship of the drama in this period, as exercised by the Masters of the Revels. Deliberate and consistent censorship of literature on sexual grounds seems only to have begun once sexuality itself began to assume something of its modern culturallyidentifiable shape, in which pornography has a separate and identifiable status as an affront to public morality. And there is a wide consensus that this took place in England during the Commonwealth and Restoration. As David Foxon put it, `pornography seems to have been born and grown to maturity in a brief period in the middle of the seventeenth century . . . at this period sex became to some extent intellectualized' (ix). Foucault only elaborated and confirmed this perception. Prior to this, as Roger Thompson has outlined, there is evidence of a growing selfconsciousness about sexuality, and some bowdlerisation and self-censorship (and it is not impossible that Herbert was a straw in that wind). But, just as there was little published that was aimed primarily to arouse readers sexually (as distinct from being bawdy, indecently facetious or mildly titillating), so there were few attempts to restrict texts

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on these grounds (pp. 8±11). A Bill was proposed in the 1604 Parliament against importing, printing, buying or selling, popish, vain and lascivious books but (like an earlier `Acte to restraine licentious printing') it did not reach the statute books. The formula that links `popish' with `lascivious' points to the recurrent problem we have in determining the extent to which sexuality was ever really the issue in this period, since it is all but impossible to distinguish sexual discourse from that of religion and politics. That problem is there quite clearly in the key originating figure in the history of Western pornography, Pietro Aretino. Aretino became notorious for the obscene sonnets he wrote to accompany erotic prints based on Giulio Romano's drawings, I modi ± `the positions' or `the pictures', as they were coyly referred to. It is in fact unclear if these ever circulated in England, though they were certainly known about and discussed in the works of Jonson (Volpone), Donne and others. However, another of his pornographic books (in the literal sense of `talking about whores'), I ragionimenti, was certainly published in England, in 1584. But, as Lynda Boose observes, `Prior to 1584 Aretino had been known in England primarily as a political satirist and scourger of princes, a poet who had been compared even to Tasso and Petrarch by none other than Gabriel Harvey' (Boose, p. 194). Boose in fact discusses Aretino in the course of arguing that `overt sexual discourse' (p. 187) in the verse satires of the 1590s was central to their being proscribed by the Bishops' Ban of June 1599, and in some cases then burned. But her insistence on prioritising sexual discourse over other concerns rather blinds her to the continuities (which she herself identifies) between political satire and pornography/obscenity ± the ways in which the latter is often only the former by different means, as is in fact the case with Aretino. Throughout the early modern period, sexual discourse perfectly mirrored political and patronage discourses, which is why (for example) the Petrarchan sonnet from Wyatt to Sidney was the quintessential courtier form: the frustrated address to the untouchable or scornful woman replicated relations between a petitioning client and his seemingly all-powerful patron. As Leonard Tennenhouse observes: `Pursuing patronage was understood to be as much a form of courtship as pursuing marriage. Both turned on political negotiations at court, and both required the would-be suitor to generate desire' (p. 202). The modulation of the sexual discourse from idealisation to pornography/obscenity does not dismantle those central metaphors, but presents them in different ± often satiric ± terms, which might be graduated in a variety of sub-sets (Rabelaisian, Juvenalian, Aretinian etc.). In this sense, early modern

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sexual discourse always requires its own particular form of analogical reading. This is what makes it so difficult to determine whether censors at the time were in fact responding to what later ages would describe/proscribe as obscenity, as distinct from the-political-in-the-obscene. In the case of the Bishops' Ban, Cyndia Clegg has convincingly demonstrated that the whole episode was a response to growing tensions surrounding the Earl of Essex's Irish expedition (Clegg, 1997a, pp. 198±217). Most of the texts `called in' under the ban had previously been licensed quite straightforwardly by the clerical licensers, including one, Nashe's Lenten Stuff, which had been allowed by Archbishop Whitgift himself ± the key mover of the ban, as Clegg suggests, because of his friendship with Essex. The largely Juvenalian codes of those verse satires would have been perfectly intelligible to their licensers from the start, and there is no reason to suppose that the leaders of the Church of England were suddenly overtaken by a fit of prudishness. What had changed was the political climate, with Essex's fortunes in the balance and the man himself unable to answer his critics at court: in such a climate Whitgift and Bancroft saw fit for a time to circumscribe the provocations represented (equally and suggestively) both by pornographic satires and by English histories like John Hayward's Life of Henry IV (see Chapter 8 `Buggeswords'). Clegg similarly argues for the political, as distinct from sexual, provocations of another censored text discussed by Lynda Boose, George Gascoigne's A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres (1573), revised and reissued as The Posies (1575). As she demonstrates, the earlier text was probably not censored, though it may have been `censured', and the `calling in' of the later version in 1576 (only after most of the imprint had been sold) was much more likely to have been a response to scandals involving senior courtiers, such as the Earl of Leicester, rather than to obscenity inherent in the text (pp. 103±22). Critics like Boose and Richard McCoy, doubtless prompted by modern agendas, have been led to over-emphasise the issue of obscenity by Gascoigne's own elaborate prefatory material in The Posies, which simultaneously obfuscates and misleads even as it directs alert readers along certain paths (Boose, pp. 190±1; McCoy, 1985). As Clegg puts it: The author returned from abroad not only to discover that his poems had offended in their language but further they had been `doubtfully construed, and (therefore) scandalous.' In particular `busie conjectures have presumed' that `The Adventures of F.J.' was `written to

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the scandalizing of some worthie personages, whom they woulde seeme therby to know.' (2{1r) The offending matter is clear: `wanton speeches and lascivious phrases . . . doubtfully construed' ± particularly those in `The Adventures of F.J.' [a poem in the collection]. Gascoigne's use of `wanton' and `lascivious' (like his claims of surreptitious publishing) are deliberately misleading. The Domestic State Papers and Acts of the Privy Council are filled with the Council's attentions to `lewd' words and `wanton' reports, but inevitably the libels and slanders are character assassinations. Thus, the words Gascoigne selects to indicate transgressive language in his texts can refer to either sexualized discourse or personal attack ± or both. (pp. 110±11) That is Gascoigne, like Hall, Marston and the other verse satirists after him, deliberately exploited the scandalous frisson of sexualised discourse (which in and of itself was of little interest to the censors) as a smokescreen for oblique political commentary (`character assassinations'), which was always actually more likely to attract the attentions of the licensing authorities ± as eventually happened here. When we examine the practice of the Tudor and Stuart Masters of the Revels in these matters, the evidence is again invariably ambiguous, precisely because it is unclear whether an intervention has been made on grounds of taste, or because people of influence might have been implicated. In Mastering the Revels I looked at Sir George Buc's censorship of The Second Maiden's Tragedy (1611) and Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt (1619) in this light, two of the few surviving manuscripts where the personal attentions of the licenser are apparent (pp. 196±203; 210±11). The former did elicit from Buc what Virginia Gildersleeve long ago took to be solicitude for the reputation of women, aptly observing that `such consideration for the feelings of the weaker sex is hardly to be expected in the drama of the period' (p. 111). Yet, in a play which is clearly alert to the recent assassination of Henri IV in France and seems to be equally alert to sexual scandals and religious controversies in the court at home, it is difficult to determine where gallantry ends and political sensitivity begins. Similarly, Buc made some efforts to tone down occasional passages of smut in Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt, but there again the play seems to carry a double political charge ± firstly in shadowing recent events in the Netherlands, where notable English figures were actually involved; and secondly in having the potential to be read as a commentary on the fate of Sir Walter Ralegh.3 Furthermore, the apparent intervention of the Bishop of London, which delayed the play's first

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The Woman's Prize Let us now return to The Woman's Prize, and Sir Henry Herbert's response to it, in the light of this discussion. The play survives in both manuscript (probably pre-1633) and printed folio (1647) versions, and the relationship between the two is examined in some detail by Bawcutt (Herbert, pp. 60±2). In as much as censorship may explain differences between the two, it seems clear that someone has significantly toned down the oaths and profanity in the folio version, though without eradicating them entirely. And while, as Bawcutt observes, `a number of the grosser obscenities were removed,' some of the most striking of such cuts in the folio text occur in contexts where obscenity and religious matters (especially references to Roman Catholicism) overlap, such that it is not possible to determine which issue is primary. The longest of these is as follows: Tranio Of what religion are they? Rowland Good old Catholikes, They deal by intercession all, they keepe A kind of household Gods, call'd chamber-maides, Which being pray'd to, and their offerings brought, (Which are in gold, yet some observe the old law And give `em flesh) probatum est, you shall have As good love for your monie, and as tydie As ere you turn'd your legge ore, and that ended ± (3.1.50±7) Bawcutt concludes `Herbert . . . would probably have found the passage both blasphemous and obscene' (p. 62). It is certainly provocative in both respects, but how can we actually determine Herbert's priorities here, if he was indeed responsible for this deletion? In acknowledging the element of blasphemy, Bawcutt also observes that he `had not tolerated anti-Catholicism in The Launching of the Mary', and that unusual play does offer an interesting perspective on this situation.

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presentation, suggests that there was religious dimension to the play's provocative nature, perhaps associated with its discussion of Arminianism (Dutton, 1991, pp. 207, 213). In such a context it would be foolhardy to assume that we could always intuit the priorities of a censor, in matters either sexual, religious or political.

The Launching of the Mary, Or The Honest Seaman's Wife, by Walter Mountfort, survives in manuscript with Herbert's annotations. It is another piece of evidence from precisely this period, since Herbert licensed it on 27 June 1633, with this endorsement: `all ye Oaths left out in ye action as they are crost in ye booke & all other Reformations strictly observd, may be acted not otherwyse' (Herbert, p. 52). Obscenity is hardly an issue in the play, probably because its author was not a professional dramatist but an employee of the East India Company, and a principal motive of the play is glorification of the Company and its policies. So smut or bawdy would have been distinctly out of place. Nevertheless, Herbert was careful about the religious drift of some passages and (just as I have suggested in other contexts) his attention to `oaths' seems partly to relate to wider religious agendas. Again, Roman Catholicism is clearly an issue, and Henrietta Maria (the `Mary' of the title is a company ship named in her honour) is an explicit focus of such concerns. At one point, the Governor of the East India Company exclaims: And blest be shee whose royall name she beares nor is there any but blood-thirstinge monkes or hell-bred Iesuites will wish otherwyse. but as they swimme in synne, so lett them sinke vnto perdition. (Mountfort: 5.2; lines 2758±62) We can hardly be surprised that Herbert marked the last three lines heavily for deletion. It is as if the loyal sentiments about the Queen are an excuse for virulent anti-Catholic sentiment which, although cast as an attack on those who might denigrate her, cannot help but point up her own religious affiliations. There are several other features of the play, including its sub-plot concerning the `Honest Seaman's Wife', which argue that the play is an attack on the court (or at least on Henrietta Maria's influence there) as much as it is a celebration of the East India Company. The Launching of the Mary shows that Herbert was extremely sensitive at this time to anti-Catholic passages, and the potential of even the most `loyal' of them to point directly or indirectly to Henrietta Maria. The obscenity of such passages in other plays (as in The Women's Prize) might have been incidental, even irrelevant, unless it pointed to the politics/ courtship coding to which I alluded earlier. The manuscript of The Honest Man's Fortune, seen by Herbert much earlier (8 February 1625), shows

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similar complexities and provides interesting parallel evidence. Like The Woman's Prize it had previously been licensed by Buc but submitted to Herbert for re-licensing with certain passages apparently already marked for deletion by the bookkeeper, Edward Knight. These were presumably meant to anticipate Herbert's judgement: `Eight passages were totally deleted, though only one of these was of any length, a discussion between two unemployed soldiers who consider the possibility of setting up a male brothel . . . A reference to ``ffrench lords'' in a context of fashionable homosexuality was deleted and replaced by ``gallants'' . . . ; clearly the point at issue was the nationality, not the sexual practices' (Herbert, p. 58). Precisely. Knight did not expect Herbert to bother with dubious sexual behaviour if it was no longer likely to offend persons (or friendly nations) of consequence. By the same token, would Herbert have worried about the obscenity in The Woman's Prize if it had not been so involved with the anti-Catholicism? It is certainly true that `The Woman's Prize contains so many double meanings that to remove them all would destroy the play', but hardly more true than of many other Jacobean plays we could name, several of which Herbert re-licensed without comment. My point, in brief, is that the play's relatively casual anti-Catholicism (which is not uncommon in early Jacobean drama) is the likeliest clue we have to explain Herbert's overall reaction. The play is a reworking of The Taming of the Shrew plot, with the sexual roles reversed. In 1633 it would not take an over-active imagination to link a dominant woman, and anti-Catholic satire, with Queen Henrietta Maria's open Roman Catholicism and its supposed effect both on the Church of England and on other members of the royal family ± especially since Petruccio's dominant second wife in the play is called Maria. The play is in fact an example of the kind of early Jacobean Fletcherian drama which Philip Finkelpearl has characterised as opposed to absolutist tyranny and to courtly crypto-Catholicism (1990)4. Its encodings may well have seemed perfectly adequate to Buc when it was first written ± but in the religious tensions of 1633 as I have outlined them, and in the context of other challenges to Herbert's authority, the unsupervised revival of The Woman's Prize was a very provocative act. It is perfectly understandable how it might cause Herbert to link the issue of re-licensing old plays with `offensive things against church and state'. It may be that Herbert was genuinely fastidious about profanity and obscenity, as he insists he was. But it is surely revealing how often he links these issues ± `oaths, prophaness, or obsceanes', `oaths, prophaness, and ribaldrye' ± in what is far from a necessary configuration. And in no

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instance can we divorce those considerations from a wider political or religious contextualisation, as we assume it is possible to do in modern liberal democracies. So that, when Bawcutt observes that the `surviving records show Sir Henry acting more often as a censor of morality than of politics', the issue is much less clear-cut than his formulation would imply. The question has to be why he chose to exercise that fastidiousness more punctiliously at some times than at others, and most specifically why he chose to exercise it so peremptorily in the instance of The Woman's Prize, at this time, when the actors were (in terms of custom and practice) doing nothing improper. I cannot, of course, prove that the actors revived the play because of its fortuitous parallels with current circumstances, or that Herbert objected to it on those grounds. But it seems to me more likely than not, and one circumstance lends the suggestion support. The intervention of Henry Rich, Earl of Holland (`at my lord of Hollands request'), to get the book of the play returned to the King's Men, suggests that the actors had followed their usual practice in turning to a substantial patron at court in this moment of crisis. Yet for once they did not involve the Lord Chamberlain but turned to a close and (in the words of the Dictionary of National Biography) `empty-headed' favourite of Queen Henrietta Maria.5 If the play really was seen to be `over-reading' the popular view of Henrietta Maria, there could be no better authority for the actors to enlist to absolve them of such `applications'. And the issue was such a delicate one that it would be entirely understandable if Herbert chose to express his reservations in terms of `oaths, prophaness, and ribaldrye' rather than discuss with the actors, or commit to paper, views of the Queen's religious and political practices. In short, this phrase is Herbert's private shorthand for provocative transgressions by the actors and their dramatists, not so much in matters of public morality but more specifically in relation to matters of political and religious policy. Shirley's The Young Admiral is praised for not crossing the line in these matters; the actors' use of the old play is briskly halted as a surreptitious attempt to cross the line (by drawing on a text written when the line was in a very different place), and in effect to circumvent Herbert's authority, at a time when that authority was already under severe pressure. Hence all his huffing and puffing about the lower standards of his predecessors, The Spanish Viceroy affair and the need to re-license old plays (already stripped by the bookkeepers of transgressive material) before they can be staged again. Even in the case of The Wits (as with The Launching of the Mary), where obscenity is not an issue, it seems likely that the extra concern about oaths is not

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simply a response to blasphemy but reflects a sensitivity to the heightened religious tensions surrounding the court. Davenant may have had courtly connections (Endymion Porter, the king's confidante, conveyed his objections) but the king's personal involvement in the outcome suggests wider terms of reference. If the livelihood of the dramatists and actors depended to a large degree upon Herbert's good will, conversely his authority relied in practice on their co-operation. If that co-operation were to be withdrawn, it was only a matter of time before the exercise of his authority was scrutinised again by a higher authority like the Court of High Commission or Star Chamber. Given the frictions over The Magnetic Lady and The Ball, relations between the actors and their licenser must already have been at a low ebb for much of 1633. The attempted production of The Woman's Prize seems to have driven them close to breakdown ± though the actors finally had the common sense not to pursue a battle they could not ultimately win (as they perhaps also did in the High Commission case). Herbert's stated preoccupation in all this with `oaths, prophaness, and ribaldrye' must not be seen just as a prissy concern for public morality. It was a semi-public new drawing of a line in the sand, a demarcation of the limits of his authority, beyond which he was not prepared to let dramatists and actors go. The whole sequence of events graphically demonstrates the constraints within which the authority of the Masters of the Revels had always operated, and the accommodations and understandings which normally allowed them to function effectively and unchallenged. But it also demonstrates how potentially vulnerable they were, how exposed to the political winds.

A final footnote, to put these matters in perspective. About a month after the crisis over The Woman's Prize, the play which Herbert had praised for its `beneficial and cleanly way of poetry' and recommended `for a patterne to other poetts' was rewarded with a performance at court: `On tusday the 19th of November, being the king's birth-day, The Young Admirall was acted at St. James by the queen's players, and likt by the K. and Queen' (Herbert, p. 184). The very next entry to survive records: `The King's players sent me an ould booke of Fletchers called The Loyal Subject, formerly allowed by Sir George Bucke, 16 Novemb. 1618, which according to their desire and agreement I did peruse, and with some reformations allowed of, the 23 of Nov. 1633, for which they sent mee according to their promise 1l.0.0.' In the margin, Herbert added: `The

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first ould play sent mee to be perused by the K. players' (Herbert, p. 185). All of which suggests that Herbert and his principal company had reached a modus vivendi: they were voluntarily (`their desire and agreement') sending old plays for him to re-license, and he was only charging them half his usual fee.6 By such expedients the symbiotic relationship of licenser and licensees was restored to the old balance of mutual selfinterest. (The later problems over The Wits, of course, did not involve the actors.) Most intriguing of all, however: `On Thursday night at St. James, the 28 of Novemb. 1633, was acted before the King and Queene, The Tamer Tamd, made by Fletcher. Very well likt' (ibid ). Texts were rarely so transgressive or provocative that they could not be performed at all, and some surprising ones were accorded court performances. Even Eastward Ho, which nearly resulted in the mutilation of its authors in 1605, was presented at court in 1613. The battle of wills between Herbert and the King's Men over The Woman's Prize was not over the subversiveness of the text per se: it was over Herbert's final authority to determine what precisely was acceptable and on what terms, and doubtless it was his version of the play that was performed. It had been a feature of the licensing structure presided over by successive Masters of the Revels that once those parameters were recognised and respected, the most provocative of texts could usually be seen and doubtless perfectly well decoded (despite the removal of the most provocative triggers) even by those who were its implicit targets. The printed text of The Woman's Prize has a prologue, which may well have been written for the court performance, broadly hinting at these very patrician understandings. It purports to tell the audience what they should and should not expect: We do intreat the angry men would not

Expect the mazes of a subtle plot,

Set speeches, high expressions; and what's worse,

In a true comedy, politic discourse.

(Beaumont and Fletcher, 1905±12, 8, p. 2) If my reading of the play is correct, the prologue is typical of its form in disingenuously alerting the audience to find exactly what it tells them they should not expect ± in this case the `politique discourse' of sexual comedy. The idea of Charles and Henrietta Maria watching The Women's Prize and `very well' liking it is reminiscent of Elizabeth, way back in 1565, confiding to the Spanish Ambassador with whom she was watch-

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ing a comedy about marital choices at Gray's Inn: `This is all against me' (Chambers, I, p. 161).7 Unlike Massinger's The King and the Subject, it was presumably provocative but not `too insolent' (see Chapter 1 `Regulation and Censorship'). In most respects, then, Herbert achieved a return to the status quo, after a year in which his authority had been severely tested. Yet the situation could never exactly be the same again. The Magnetic Lady did not receive a court performance (as far as we can tell), which is neither here nor there. But the Court of High Commission had cut across Herbert's authority in a way which destabilised his working relationship with the actors. In the end he was exonerated, and in fact neither the civil nor the ecclesiastical judiciary ever compromised his theatrical authority again, though the intervention of the Star Chamber court may have been sufficient to put an end to his experiment in licensing non-dramatic texts. But what had happened graphically demonstrated the limits of Herbert's actual powers, and the over-dependence both of himself and of the actors on the goodwill of a political structure, epitomised by the officiously authoritarian Archbishop Laud, whose time was running out.

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Marlowe: Censorship and Construction

With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them I care not if I never be: the other, whom at the time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had [. . .] because myself I have seen his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he possesses. (Henry Chettle, `To the Gentleman Readers', prefacing Kind-Heart's Dream) I know that nothing can be so innocently writ, or carried, but may be made obnoxious to construction. (Ben Jonson, Dedicatory Epistle to Volpone)1

While Shakespeare as a personality remains enigmatically elusive, the opposite might be said to be true of his exact contemporary, Christopher Marlowe. So much so, that there are few authors with whom it is necessary to discriminate so vigilantly between the man and his writings as it is with him. For the temptation to read one `Marlowe' in the light of the other remains as strong today as it apparently was for his contemporaries. The `over-reaching' protagonists of the plays mirror the man of aggressively heterodox views who came under Privy Council scrutiny, while some ideas voiced in the plays are very close to opinions that Marlowe himself was supposed to hold and which were recorded as incriminating. Richard Baines's deposition `containing the opinion of one Christopher Marly concerning his damnable judgement of religion and scorn of God's word' records Marlowe as claiming `that the first beginning of religion was only to keep men in awe', which is not far removed from Machiavel's `I count religion but a childish toy, / And hold there is no sin but ignorance' in The Jew of Malta (Prologue, lines 14±15). Baines's claim that Marlowe also held `that all they that love not [. . .] 62

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boys were fools' finds apparent corroboration in the provocative opening of Dido Queen of Carthage, where `is discovered Jupiter dandling Ganymede upon his knee'.2 The manner and timing of Marlowe's death only compounded the pressure to identify the man with his literary creations, as we see in the sonnet appended to Gabriel Harvey's `Newe Letter of Notable Contents' (September 1593), where the death of `Tamberlaine' is listed as one of the notable events of the `wonderful yeare', 1593, and a gloss declares how death, `smiling at his Tamberlaine contempt [. . .] sternly struck home the peremptory stroke'. Puritan divines similarly seized upon the `poetic' justice of the ungodly end in the Deptford tavern, as `apt' in its way as the deaths of Edward II or the Jew of Malta. Thomas Beard's pointedly titled Theatre of God's Judgements declared Marlowe to be an actor in the sight of God `not inferior to any [. . .] in Atheisme and impietie', insisting that he died with an oath on his lips (p. 149). More on the level of tabloid journalism Francis Meres supposed that Marlowe had paid the penalty, Faustus-like, for his unnatural presumption in sexual matters (and a parallel carelessness in social ones): `As the poet Lycophron was shot to death by a certain rival of his, so Christopher Marlowe was stabd to death by a bawdy serving-man, a rival of his in his lewde love' (fol. 286). Even now, though stripped (we hope) of Harvey's, Beard's, and Meres's triumphalism (and even though we know that Meres was wrong about the `bawdy serving-man'), such configurations still powerfully grip the imagination. Yet these are not the only `readings' of the-man-in-the-works, theworks-in-the-man that Marlowe's own contemporaries sanctioned. The testimony of those who conveyed some of his works into print offers a very different construction. Richard Jones, the printer of Tamburlaine (1590) informed his `Gentlemen Readers, and others that take pleasure in reading Histories' that `I have purposely omitted and left out some fond and frivolous gestures, digressing and, in my poor opinion, far unmeet for the matter, which I thought might seem far more tedious unto the wise than any way else to be regarded. Though haply they have been of some vain-conceited fondlings greatly gaped at, what times they were showed upon the stage in their graced deformities, nevertheless now, to be mixtured in print with such matter of worth, it would prove a great disgrace to so honourable and stately a history' (Marlowe, 1976, p. 5). Jones does not actually deny that this comic material was written by Marlowe himself, but implies that it was unworthy of `the author', whose `eloquence' he leaves to speak for itself. In dedicating Hero and Leander (1598), Edward Blount more circumspectly reminds Sir Thomas

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Walsingham of `entertaining the parts of reckoning and worth which you found in [the unhappily deceased author], with good countenance and liberal affection' and suggests that Marlowe would have looked for a similar reception for `this unfinished tragedy' as he himself had received (Marlowe, 1976, p. 400). Both of these construct an essential Marlowe, a gentleman scholar (implicitly the author of what Jonson was to dub the `mighty line'), which is to be distinguished from his unfortunate associations with the popular theatre, from other unnamed qualities (doubtless those stressed by Harvey, Beard, and Meres), and from an incompleteness which is common both to the life and some of the works. Both of these `constructions' underpin distinct schools of thought in the modern appreciation of Marlowe, including one which takes its cue from Jones and sees him as a great poet but as rather less of a dramatist, and another which in effect endorses Harvey and Beard in seeing him as the `demon' of Elizabethan culture, though it sometimes celebrates rather than castigates him for it. A.P. Rossiter was representative of the former in claiming that `Marlowe, except in Edward II is a dramatist only in his dramatic poetry ± in great vistas of mind rather than of the slipknot of fate or events pulling tight on human lives' (p. 174). This view ± based on a very partial sense of what constitutes drama ± is less prevalent than it was, though Roma Gill's recent attempt, for example, to deny Marlowe's hand in even those comic scenes of Dr Faustus that were printed in the 1604 A text (she ascribes them to Thomas Nashe and the clown John Adams) still derives ultimately from an unwillingness to associate the author of `the mighty line' with the supposed banalities of the popular theatre (Marlowe, 1990, pp. xv±xxi).3 Stephen Greenblatt typifies the latter school of thought in finding in Marlowe's work `a subversive identification with the alien', of a kind that `flaunts society's cherished orthodoxies, embraces what the culture finds loathsome or frightening' (1980, pp. 203, 220). By the same token, these potentially antithetical `constructions' ± Marlowe the scholar poet, and Marlowe the demon ± predictably underpinned the debate about the theology and dramaturgy of Dr Faustus, which was for so long polarised between those who saw it as orthodoxly Christian and its ending poetically `closed', and those who saw it as an embodiment of Renaissance humanist aspiration and the ending provocatively indeterminate (Bluestone, 1969). It is pointless now to enquire whether either of these early `readings' of Marlowe was inherently more objective or truthful; we cannot escape the fact that the record is ambivalent and self-contradictory. But we must be alert to the fact that each item of the testimony is as much a product

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of Elizabethan culture as was Marlowe himself, and susceptible to deconstruction on those grounds. Baines was a paid informer, and whether or not he was under orders to paint Marlowe in the worst light possible, it seems highly likely that his testimony would be coloured by his apprehension of what his paymasters wanted to hear. Harvey is characterised by the Dictionary of National Biography as `a man of arrogant and censorious spirit, far too conscious of his own considerable abilities, while but little disposed to recognise the merits and claims of others' (DNB, 1, p. 908). Gloating on the death of Marlowe is in part the sour grapes of a Cambridge academic who felt thwarted in his own career but resentful of anything resembling success on the part of fellow scholars who had deserted their colleges for the flesh-pots of London. Richard Jones was no paragon, either. The Stationers' Company twice fined him for disorderly printing and once (1583) committed him to prison for printing without a licence; in 1592 Nicholas Breton complained that Jones had printed his Bower of Delighte `altogether without my consent and knowledge, and many thinges of other mens mingled with a few of mine'. Jones's usual fare, moreover, was ballads, chap-books, and popular romances, so the attempt in the preface to Tamburlaine to ingratiate himself with `Gentleman Readers' and to imply a shared disdain for `fond and frivolous gestures' hardly rings entirely true (DNB, 1, pp.1098±9). Edward Blount, by contrast, was altogether more respectable, the publisher of John Florio's Italian-English Dictionary and later of his translations of Montaigne; he is best remembered as one of the consortium that published the Shakespeare first folio which, like his own translation from the Italian of Lorenzo Ducci's Ars Aulica; or The Courtier's Arte (1607), was jointly dedicated to the Herbert Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery (DNB, 1, p. 175). Respectability, however, is no guarantee of objectivity. Blount's dedicatee, Sir Thomas Walsingham, had certainly known Marlowe, and the two of them may well have been at his funeral: `We think not ourselves discharged of the duty we owe to our friend when we have brought the breathless body to the earth' (Marlowe, 1976, p. 400). Indeed, when the Privy Council issued a warrant for Marlowe's arrest, on 18 May 1593, they ordered a messenger of the Queen's chamber `to repair to the house of Mr Thomas Walsingham in Kent, or to any other place where he shall understand Christopher Marlowe to be remaining': the association between Marlowe and Walsingham was well known in a body of which the latter's cousin, Sir Francis Walsingham, had been a key member until his death three years before (Dasent, 1592±93, p. 244). A.L. Rowse is one who has readily assumed that Marlowe and the younger Walsingham

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were jointly employed by Sir Francis on espionage missions in the 1580s (pp. 29±30). Others have assumed much more: Ingram Frizer, the man who killed Marlowe on 30 May 1593, was the Walsinghams' business agent, and it is only too easy to speculate about the death being premeditated expediency rather than Frizer's self defence in a dispute over the reckoning at the Deptford tavern (the version of events accepted by the inquest jury, and which secured Frizer a prompt pardon) (Rowse, pp. 197±200). As the Privy Council (and Baines) closely scrutinised Marlowe's affairs, was Walsingham afraid of what might emerge about his association with the poet? Or, if not Walsingham himself, what of the other notables with whom Marlowe had been associated? Baines's deposition mentions `one Heriots, being Sir W. Raleigh's man': a reference to the mathematician, Thomas Hariot, who was in Ralegh's service. It is apparent elsewhere that Marlowe was associated with the Ralegh circle, and according to one report `Marlowe [. . .] hath read the atheist lecture to Sir Walter Raleigh and others' (Marlowe, 1976, pp. 512±13). When Marlowe was detained in Flushing by Sir Robert Sidney on suspicion of coining ( January 1592) he boasted himself that he was `very well known both to the Earl of Northumberland and my Lord Strange' (Wernham, p. 345). `The Wizard Earl' and the enigmatic Ferdinando, Lord Strange are names as charismatic as Ralegh's to conjure with. Conjuring ± or perhaps juggling ± is, however, all we can finally do with these names and circumstances. There is no evidence that the death did not occur exactly as Frizer claimed it did, and the precise relationship of Marlowe to these men of power and influence simply cannot be determined. The one object-lesson which may be said to follow from this complex tissue of suggestive association and pure speculation, in the shadow-land of the court and its acolytes, is that Blount's dedication of Hero and Leander to Walsingham cannot be accepted as entirely `innocent', in the sense that it cannot be divorced from the pressures of patronage, factional disputation, and political intrigue that were inescapable facts of life for the privileged classes of Elizabethan England, making their public faces matters of considerable value.4 To this extent the dedication, like others of its type, was a calculated public act, and the view of Marlowe it propagates cannot but have been composed with the reciprocal interests of Walsingham and Blount himself in mind. Everywhere we look, in short, we find that the views of Marlowe propagated by his contemporaries, and overlaid upon his writings, are radically unreliable, `constructions' liable to deconstruction. Indeed, in so far as they continue (however subtly) to inform our current reading of

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Marlowe's works, they require deconstruction. The same is true of more recent `narratives' of Marlowe, including the `conspiracy theory' of his death, which only became possible when Leslie Hotson uncovered the details of the inquest and so of the personnel involved. It was in fact Hotson himself who first saw such possibilities in what he had discovered and argued for them in The Death of Christopher Marlowe (1925). It has been given substantial new life in Charles Nicholl's The Reckoning: the Murder of Christopher Marlowe (1992), a title which says it all. The `conspiracy theory', however elaborated, triumphantly underscores the `demonisation' of Marlowe: it is the twentieth-century's answer to Thomas Beard, political skulduggery standing in for the hand of God. But scepticism is as modern a trait as conspiracy theory, so that P.E.J. Hammer revisits all the evidence with antithetical conclusions, summing up his case: `Instead of a political murder, Marlowe's death is seen as a clumsy but almost mundane event, a killing which would soon have been forgotten if the victim had been less famous and left no legacy of verse' (p. 241). Shakespeare, as I observed earlier, resolutely resists reduction to narratives of this type. While it is entirely possible to construct `documentary lives', or to chronicle at least the last 20 years of his career, the personality behind the factual record remains shadowy and indistinct. Yet, if we examine the early commentary on Shakespeare in the same spirit as we have that on Marlowe, we can see that it contains equally potent, if less melodramatic constructions, and ones that have subtly rooted themselves in subsequent readings of his works. I examine these more extensively in Chapter 5 `Shakespeare: the Birth of the Author', but for now wish to concentrate on the one instance in this where an early (indeed, very early) construction of Shakespeare is built on the back of a construction of Marlowe as the demonised `other'. The extract from Henry Chettle's Kind-Heart's Dream which stands at the head of this essay is a famous reaction to an even more famous comment: the earliest known allusion to Shakespeare as a dramatist, which occurs in Robert Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, Bought with a Million of Repentance, published posthumously in 1592: `There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country' (Schoenbaum, 1987, p. 151). Nothing can be taken for granted about this passage: only the punning on `Shake-scene' and the barbed misquotation of a line from a play whose authorship is not beyond dispute (`O tiger's heart wrapp'd in a

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woman's hide' (3 Henry VI, 1.4.137)) links it with Shakespeare. What it actually says about him is far from clear, and even the fact that Greene wrote it can be doubted ± it certainly was at the time (Dutton, 1989, pp. 17±20). Nevertheless, whoever wrote it certainly chose to channel a general grudge against actors (the passage is preceded by embittered comments on `those puppets [. . .] that spake from our mouths, those antics garnished in our colours'), into specific complaints against one of them who, `wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you'. The `you' seems to embrace all fellow authors, and the nub of the complaint appears to be that this `only Shake-scene' has got above himself, pretending to the status of a dramatist which the author tacitly reserves to university-educated men like himself. Where Harvey scorned Marlowe for prostituting his scholarship to the theatre, `Greene' snubbed `Shake-scene' for presuming above his academic and social standing: the pecking-order was a complex one, and in flux, but all the more fiercely contested for that. This is how Chettle came to be involved. With Greene dead, suspicions that he might not have written the pamphlet, and complaints about its contents, focused on the man who oversaw it for the press. The `apology' in Kind-Heart's Dream addressed complaints from two aggrieved parties: `with neither of them [. . .] was I acquainted, and with one of them I care not if I never be'. All the circumstantial evidence points to this having been Marlowe, whose learning Chettle properly respects while resenting what appear to have been threats against him (`him I would wish to use me no worse than I deserve') and alluding darkly to a passage in Greene's pamphlet which he had edited out for the press: `Had it been true, yet to publish it, was intolerable'. A charge of atheism, or of homosexuality? While Chettle concurs with Robert Jones and Edward Blount in acknowledging Marlowe's scholarship, he anticipates more wholeheartedly the constructions of Thomas Beard and Richard Baines which made him out to be mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Chettle's response to the other complainant, who all the circumstantial evidence suggests must be Shakespeare, is very different: `Myself have seen his demeanour no less civil than he is excellent in the quality he professes: besides, divers of worship have reported, his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art.' In short, he was what we should call a gentleman: his behaviour demonstrates it, and reliable witnesses vouch for the fact. For the Elizabethans being a gentleman was not a matter of good manners but of precise social status. The `divers of worship' who have spoken for Shakespeare's good standing are explicitly gentlemen (just as `divers

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of honour' would explicitly have been noblemen: Ringler). He was not yet formally of their number, but was to join their ranks in 1596 when his father acquired the right to bear arms by virtue of having been bailiff of Stratford. Chettle acknowledges him as all but a gentleman; and so rebuts Greene's slur against the `player', which takes its force from the fact that actors outside the official framework of licensing and patronage had the legal standing of vagabonds, sturdy beggars, and masterless men ± the very antithesis of gentry (Beier). So far from being such, Chettle assures us, Shakespeare demonstrates his quality in his (reported) `facetious grace in writing, that approves his art'.5 This picture of `gentle' Will Shakespeare elides all too easily with nineteenth- and early twentieth-century notions of him as essentially an apolitical artist, a writer focused on timeless universal truths rather than the uncomfortable realities of early modern existence, just as his employment in the theatre could be romanticised as a slightly unfortunate means to a necessary end, but one where we should not suppose he demeaned himself unduly. And this in turn elides gracefully with the fact that he was one of the few major dramatists whose works did not bring him into confrontation with the authorities. So Virginia C. Gildersleeve, in what remained for much of the twentieth century the standard work on the question of government regulation of Renaissance drama, spoke for many when she described Shakespeare as `obviously in sympathy with the government and the customs prevailing in his time' and central to her perception that `the Elizabethan drama was, indeed, essentially non-controversial. It was chiefly romantic concerned not with how things ought to be, but with how they might appear most splendid, most thrilling, most effective [. . .] it dealt rather with analysis of human character, of the foibles of human nature, than with political and social problems' (p. 135). This is a curiously blinkered statement at the end of an account of how dramatists as varied as Jonson and Chapman, Marston and Daniel, Day and Middleton, Massinger and Shirley, all fell foul of the authorities for their plays. But it squares well enough with Shakespeare's record, who is not known to have troubled the authorities in anything more subversive than a failure to pay a small sum in property taxes (Schoenbaum, 1987, p. 211). Even in the one instance where a play of his incontrovertibly proved contentious ± Richard II was both censored for the press and associated with the Essex rebellion ± the author himself was at arms' length from the controversy, having no role in the printing of the play and not being called to answer for the performance commissioned by the Essex conspirators (the actor Augustine Phillips

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did that on behalf of the company).6 The fact that we do not know Shakespeare to have been involved in any controversy may well be an accident, in the sense that the evidence has simply not survived (in particular, neither Shakespeare's own manuscripts nor the office-book of the Master of the Revels he dealt with for the great majority of his career, Edmond Tilney) but the Shakespeare of record is as uncontentious as he was `gentle'. Perhaps surprisingly, and perhaps for the same reasons, Marlowe's name is also missing from my list of contentious playwrights. While other aspects of his life clearly disturbed various authorities, there is no evidence that his writings ever did so. Yet the construction of Marlowe as a rebel, a thinker of unthinkable thoughts, has taken such a hold that (unlike `gentle' Shakespeare) it is widely supposed that his plays were subject to the particular attention of the censors, in a way that has significantly affected how they have come down to us. The fact that most if not all of them must have been read by Tilney has actually been written into their `demonisation'.7 What Tilney's reading amounted to, in fact, has become at least as contentious as the texts themselves and, as we shall see, just as liable to (mis)appropriation in the service of modern readings it is invoked to subserve. The most sustained attempt to discern the hand of censorship on Marlowe's work is William Empson's posthumous and unfinished Faustus and the Censor (1987). I should say firstly that I regard this book as a sorry monument to a great and enlivening critic, and think it was a mistake that it was published at all: the wit, scholarship and iconoclastic conviction of his best work are all in sad decline here. But since it is in the public domain and carries something of Empson's unique authority, I must take issue with those parts of the book which depend on a wholly uncritical or uninformed view of the mechanics of Elizabethan stage censorship. To that extent it is not altogether untypical of other recent Marlowe criticism, though more bluntly stated than most instances; so my consideration of what Empson has to say has general implications, and that is my justification for paying such attention to the book. Motivated at least in part by a desire to rebut readings of Dr Faustus as an orthodox Christian work, Empson tried to establish how a play as heterodox as he takes it to be (he suggests Marlowe intended to imply that Faustus found a way of avoiding Hell (p. 64)) could be both staged and printed. In the process, he invokes censorship as the sole explanation for the two separate states of the text of Dr Faustus which have come down to us.

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He assumes that Tilney first gave a licence to the play, the full heretical implications of which were only apparent in performance; that it was withdrawn when these implications were realised (p. 52); and that Tilney then threw the play to the wolves, possibly as the price for keeping his job, which Empson assumes was at risk with the establishment in 1589 of a joint commission, involving representatives of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Mayor of London, and Tilney himself, to oversee the censorship of public plays (pp. 50±1: Chambers, 4, pp. 306±7; Wickham, 1959±81, 2:1, p. 88). However, having savagely marked the play for cuts, he was prepared to license a transcript of what could still be used (the 1604 or A text), so badly mangled it was only fit for use in the provinces (pp. 54±5), while Henslowe managed to negotiate for a restitution of some of the cut scenes (though why Tilney should ever have felt the need to cut some of the comic scenes he is latterly supposed to have restored is never explained) and so produced the 1616 or B text (pp. 55±6), the version he supposes the Lord Admiral's Men performed throughout the 1590s. There is no evidence for any of these assumptions. Moreover, there is no consideration of any of the other factors which so routinely produced corrupt and incoherent versions of Elizabethan plays: revisions (Henslowe certainly paid William Birde and Samuel Rowley for some in 1602: Carson, p. 114); conventional adaptations for touring productions (Dr Faustus was performed by English actors on the continent as well as in the provinces ± another possible derivation of the 1604±16 differences); memorial reconstruction for illicit publication. Neither text is inherently any worse, say, than the 1600 quarto of Henry V or the 1603 quarto of Hamlet where censorship had never been suspected as a major cause of their inadequacies. The availability in 1616 of the Birde/Rowley additions is by far the most plausible explanation for the longer text, and it taxes the imagination to see how the new scenes (full of anti-papal farce) might ever have been thought more theologically subversive than what was originally allowed into print. This is no place to reconsider the relationship between the A and B texts of the play (see Marlowe, 1993, and Rasmussen 1994). I wish solely to address the picture of the role of the Master of the Revels which Empson (and his editor) interweave into their account to explain the various supposed stages of composition. In the first place there are any number of minor inaccuracies, which suggest that Empson had not examined the issue at all closely and was relying on a defective memory. For example, he assumes (p. 50) that Tilney would have had to write on every leaf of a text for his licence to be valid, but it is clear from manuscripts like The Second Maiden's Tragedy and Massinger's Believe As You List

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that a single signed licence at the end of the `allowed' copy was all that was required. He declares that `censors were not theatregoers' (p. 54): in fact Tilney's primary responsibility was one of `perusing' plays in performance to check their suitability for presentation at court. Thomas Heywood speaks in his An Apology for Actors (1612) of Tilney's own quarters in the old palace of St John's `where our Court player have beene in late daies yearely rehearsed, perfected, and corrected before they come to the publike view of the Prince and Nobility' (Bentley, 1968, p. 14). Moreover, we know in the case of one of Tilney's successors, Sir Henry Herbert, that he had the right to use a box in the theatres under his jurisdiction, and this was presumably established in Tilney's time (Bawcutt, 1996, pp. 214, 274). Empson also accords Tilney a knighthood he never received, a common error (p. 50), and confuses Ben Jonson's (self-proclaimed) voluntary imprisonment over Eastward Ho! with his compulsory imprisonment over the Isle of Dogs affair (p. 53). These are, however, details and it is the broad, implicit picture that is really at issue: in this, Tilney is singled out as `appointed by the Queen' (p. 50) and `the Queen's censor' (p. 52), as though this conferred some special inquisitorial status on him; he is envisaged as ( belatedly) engaging in minute theological enquiry into the implications of what happens to Faustus after his death; it is assumed that his licence would be required for the performance in the provinces of so contentious a play (p. 55, note 46); it becomes a critical part of the argument that Tilney's post as censor might be on the line as a result of the 1589 commission, so that he `must have done something decisive to save himself, for example throwing Marlowe to the wolves' (p. 51). This blends together two not entirely compatible notions: one of a strict Crown censor, with nationally recognised authority; the other of an official whose laxness on matters of theology made him potentially subject to removal by an ever-scrupulous Archbishop of Canterbury. Both of these are fallacious, in ways that distort not only Tilney's actual role but also the kinds of constraints that playwrights like Marlowe and Shakespeare would in reality have faced in dealing with the Master of the Revels as a licenser and censor. To be fair, Empson was in fact drawing (though it would seem in many instances without checking the details) on views of Tilney's role that were prevalent throughout his lifetime, stemming largely from Gildersleeve though given most currency by E.K. Chambers and G.E. Bentley. These were largely based on inadequately contextualised understandings of his 1581 Special Commission. It was often seen as creating a system of state regulation of the theatre and as so categorical as to suggest that

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The hypotheses so often and so solemnly advanced by many critics and readers of Tudor and Stuart plays about the dramatist's `advice to the queen' or `protests against the law' or `assertions of his religious dissent' must be made either in ignorance of the powers of the Master of the Revels or in assumption of his incompetence or his venality. (1971, p. 149) In this, Bentley gave definitive voice to a Whiggish attitude to Elizabethan and Jacobean government that was widely prevalent for much of the twentieth century: that the regime was in principle ruthlessly authoritarian, if often in practice incompetent, and underpinned by graft and corruption. That being so, the drama of the day must have been anodynely non-controversial, except for occasional blunders by the censors or times when `dangerous matter' somehow found a surreptitious path to the stage, perhaps specially sanctioned by powerful individuals. This is very much the attitude reflected throughout Faustus and the Censor, where it is compounded by Glynne Wickham's argument that `the relationship between Church, State and individual being [. . .] was the very subject matter which the whole machinery of censorship and control had been devised to police and suppress' (1959±81, 2:1, p. 94). Wickham's case emerges from a long view of Reformation theatrical controversy, where Catholic and Protestant propaganda vied with each other, a contest which involved the gradual suppression of religious drama in the English provinces. Of course this does form part of the wider context within which the censorship of the stage evolved. But Tilney's office arose from completely different pressures and circumstances, which finally have more to do with the rival authorities of the court and the city than of the church and the state. I have outlined in Chapter 1 `Regulation and Censorship' how Tilney's role as a censor derived from his primary function of providing entertainment at court, and how the Special Commission authorising him to `peruse' and `allow' plays intended for the commercial theatre was primarily intended to help him in that work. I have also pointed out there that his powers and responsibilities were actually far more circumscribed in practice than his Commission might suggest, and that he was for many years only one of a number of authorities competing for jurisdiction over the London stage (its profits as much as its subversive art).

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modern attempts to discover daring or subversive elements in those plays must be wrong-headed, or require (as in Empson's case) special explanations. Bentley, for example, states:

I have also argued that the court-centred perspective of the Masters of the Revels on the drama gave them a relatively relaxed, patrician view of its discussion of `matters of religion or of the governaunce of the estate of the common weale' so long as it was done with discretion. In many respects the very existence of Dr Faustus might be said to support that argument, though Empson is far from alone in seeing it as an anomaly requiring special explanation. Glynne Wickham elsewhere specifically comments on the play, saying `it is hard to understand how it could have gained a licence both for performing and printing from the Master of the Revels', while Catherine Minshull seeks `to explain the escape from total censorship of Marlowe's play in view of the general ban upon plays on religious themes' (Wickham, 1985, p. 118; Minshull, 1990, p. 197). Wickham is specifically wrong to assume a Master of the Revels had anything to do with its licence for print, which was first obtained by Thomas Bushell in 1601 (though not exercised until 1604), before anyone associated with the Revels Office had authority to license plays for the press.8 Minshull is also over-categorical to suppose that there was ever a `general ban upon plays on religious themes'. In practice, as I shall argue, Tilney and the authorities were always more concerned about the politics of religion ± the established Church of England ± and about profanity than they were about theology in the abstract, though admittedly those distinctions were more difficult to police in Reformation Europe than they might be today. Tilney could certainly be sensitive to `matters of religion', as may be seen in his reaction to what appears to be the actors' involvement in the `Martin Marprelate' controversy of 1588±90. On 6 November 1589 Sir John Harte, Lord Mayor of London, wrote to Lord Burghley: `Where by a lettre of your Lps, directed to mr.Yonge it appered unto me, that it was your honours pleasure I sholde give order for the staie of all playes within the Cittie, in that mr. Tilney did utterly mislike the same.' The minute of a Privy Council letter of 12 November suggests that what had upset Tilney (and subsequently the Council) was the religious and political content of certain plays `in that the players take upon themselves to handle in their plays certen matters of Divinytie and of State unfitt to be suffred' (Chambers 4, pp. 305±6). Nothing specifically connects the Privy Council's activity here with `Martin Marprelate', but his unlicensed pamphlets attacking the Church of England had scandalously called into question the Elizabethan settlement of church and state, and John Lyly had suggested in `Pappe-with-an-Hatchet' (October 1589) that the actors were ready to join in the controversy: `Will they not be discouraged for the common players? Would these comedies might be allowed to be

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plaid that are pend, and then I am sure he would be decyphered, and so perhaps discouraged' (Lyly, 3, p. 408). The likely inference from all this is that it was Tilney who had refused to licence the plays that had been `pend', that one or more of them had been staged in spite of this, and that both Tilney and the Privy Council had taken a dim view of the fact. The striking feature of this, if it was the case, is Lyly's implication that the plays which had not been `allowed' were anti-Martinist, that they might be beneficial in unmasking him or at least discourage him from publishing more pamphlets. If so, Tilney was presumably motivated not by a desire to suppress disloyal sentiments, but by a determination to keep so controversial a subject off the public stages altogether. If he was acting as `the Queen's censor', it was not in a spirit of imposing ideological orthodoxy but with a broad concern for public order, and latterly out of outrage that his own authority had been flouted. This whole business probably led to the setting up of the Commission of Censorship that so exercised Wickham and Empson, since it was on 12 November 1589 that letters went out to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Mayor of London, and Tilney himself, requiring the latter to join with persons (`to be men of learning and judgement') appointed by the two former in such a commission, with explicit powers to censor the plays of `the several companies of players' (presumably that means all the acting companies) and to ensure that only works passed by the three of them should be performed, on pain both of punishment and of disqualification from ever performing for a living again (Chambers, 4, pp. 306±7). The Archbishop was almost certainly involved because Whitgift was personally and ruthlessly pursuing `Martin Marprelate', whose unlicensed pamphlets called in question the religious, moral and political authority of the Church of England itself. The Lord Mayor was involved for reasons implicit in his 6 November letter, which makes plain that Tilney simply did not in practice have the authority to control playhouses in Middlesex where `mr.Yonge' ± Richard Young ± was Justice of the Peace (with jurisdiction over the Theatre and the Curtain, in one of which the unlicensed performances presumably took place). If he had it within the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction, he had certainly not used it. It is noticeable in Harte's letter that he had very probably exceeded his authority in suspending all playing within the city at this juncture, using Tilney's concern and the Privy Council's intervention in Middlesex as a cover for unilateral action. Harte probably judged that, in the charged atmosphere caused by the `Marprelate' pamphlets, it would not be too openly an act of defiance to close the theatres under his control. Normally the Privy Council would have protected the right of at least certain

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actors to perform there, as Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon did when his newly-formed company wanted to use the Cross Keys Inn in October 1594 (Schoenbaum, 1987, p. 182).9 These apparent tensions probably explain something that Wickham and Empson fail sufficiently to acknowledge: that these letters to Whitgift, Harte and Tilney are the first and last we ever hear of the joint commission, which may never in fact have come into being at all. Certainly there is no mention of it in Philip Henslowe's Diary, which begins to record his theatrical affairs from February 1592; the Master of the Revels is the only regulatory official mentioned there. We can only speculate as to why the commission was not established on a permanent basis, but one likely factor must be that it would have done nothing to address the real concerns of the London authorities. The rhetoric of their negotiations over the years with the Privy Council suggests that they were mainly interested in regulating performance themselves (so having control and deriving from it a source of income) and normally invoked the idea of banning it altogether as an extreme negotiating ploy (see Chapter 1 `Regulation and Censorship', p. 4). To have collaborated in the commission would have been for them to connive in an institutionalisation of the actors which would have achieved neither of these ends, but would have given the court (via both Tilney and the Archbishop) a lion's share of control. Tilney's position, in particular, was an awkwardness in relation to their ambitions, and this may well have been why the Lord Mayor was unwilling to serve with him. (It is also difficult to see what Tilney had to gain from the arrangement, though he would have had no choice but to follow the Privy Council's directions). The degree of resentment of Tilney is apparent from a letter of 25 February 1592, which the then Lord Mayor wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, asking him `to voutchsafe us your good favour and help for the reforming and banishing of so great evill [i.e. the actors and all the ills attendant upon them] out of the Citie'. Tilney, far from being seen as an ally, is specifically singled out as an impediment: `Hee being authorised to refourme exercise or suppresse all manner of players, playes and playeng houses whatsoever, did first licence the said playeng houses within this Citie for hir Majesties sayed service, which before that time lay open to all the statutes for the punishing of these and such Iyke disorder' (my emphasis: Chambers, 4, pp. 307±8). This does not actually say that they want to eradicate the actors, though it has been read as saying so: it is the first stage in a plan to `reform' them and to bring them back within the city's power to subject them to Parliamentary law, which Tilney's authority has superseded. Since the pretext for Tilney's authority was that `the Q. Majestie is and

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must be served at certen times by this sort of people' who need to practise their skills, he suggests that this `may easily bee don by the private exercise of hir Majesties own players in convenient place'. Whitgift raised a practical issue, to which the Lord Mayor referred in his own next letter (6 March): `As touching the consideration to bee made to Mr Tilney [. . .] for the better effecting and continuance of this restraint of the sayed playes in and about this Citie, wee have appointed certain of our Bretheren the Aldermen to confer with him forthwith' (Chambers, 4, p. 308). Note that Whitgift saw the issue as `restraint' rather than eradication. The Aldermen approached the Guild of Merchant Taylors (and probably other Livery Companies too), inviting them `to yield to the payment of one annuity to one Mr Tilney, master of the revels of the Queen's house, in whose hands the redress of this inconvenience doth rest, and that those plays might be abandoned out of this city' (my emphasis: Chambers, 4, p. 309). But this initiative came to nothing. Later that year the plague intervened, and the theatres were closed anyway, remaining so until the autumn of 1594; just before this closure Greene died, and during it Marlowe was killed. What does all this tell us about the censorship to which Marlowe's plays were subjected? In the first place it makes a nonsense of the supposition that the Commission of Censorship left Tilney in fear of losing his role as censor, and so willing to contemplate `throwing Marlowe to the wolves' (Empson, p. 51). When the chips were down, the only way to remove the obstruction that he represented was to buy him off, and for one reason or another plans to do this did not come to fruition. For another, it makes nonsense of the idea of Tilney playing a role in a `whole machinery of censorship and control [that] had been devised' to suppress theatrical discussions of `the relationship between Church, State and individual being', at least in the sense that Empson construes Wickham's formulation. The `Martin Marprelate' affair does demonstrate that Tilney would intervene to prevent the theatrical discussion of religious matters that had a specific bearing on the political constitution of the country, but in doing so he apparently silenced orthodox rather than heretical voices. And this falls a long way short of demonstrating that he would have had any serious theological interest in a play like Dr Faustus, where the religious issues are broadly apolitical. In as much as the play is partisan at all (the 1604 A text), its sympathies are conventionally Protestant nationalist. If some might argue that it is essentially disrespectful of the institutions of all organised religion, one would have to say that this is a level of sophistication that does not seem to have troubled Tilney about, say, Shakespeare's King

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John, or his successor, Sir George Buc, about the depiction of the church in Webster's tragedies, which some would regard as anti-clerical as much as anti-Catholic. The very failure of the 1589 Commission, and the subsequent negotiations over Tilney's position, demonstrate that he was never a party to the church's wider censorship role: the city authorities looked to Whitgift not as Tilney's superior, who might bring him into line, but as an ally within the Privy Council with whom they hoped to make common cause. But it is not apparent that Whitgift encouraged them in this. The proposed 1589 commission was in fact a staging post on the way to Tilney's emergence as the sole recognised authority over the stage. Rather than threatening a diminution of his powers, it actually recognised that his authority at that time was restricted in practice to the theatrical companies likely to appear at court, only a proportion of those (admittedly the most prominent ones) who might perform in or around London. The others would variously have been regulated by the Middlesex and Surrey magistrates and by certain City of London authorities. The commission seems to have been an early attempt to apply comprehensive and uniform regulation to the whole area. When it failed, and when many companies went out of business as a result of the 1593±94 plague, the Privy Council turned to an alternative policy of restricting London playing only to those companies sanctioned by itself and in effect specially favoured by the court. This was what finally gave Tilney virtual control over the London stage, a control which Wickham and Empson are wrong to suppose that he had in 1589 so that it might be at stake (as the latter argues) over the licensing of a single play. On all these counts, Empson's argument about Tilney's role in the evolution of the text of Dr Faustus simply will not hold water. At this point, however, I wish to reiterate that my case is not only directed at a book which is manifestly unsatisfactory in any number of other particulars. It also calls into question the version of censorship advanced, for example, in Jonathan Dollimore's influential Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries, which is to an extent representative of other new historicist and cultural materialist works of recent years. He assembles his case in a rather unsystematic manner: `That the theatres [. . .] were a potentially subversive context is evidenced by the fact of their censorship [. . .]. The authorities feared the theatre' (pp. 22±3). Oddly, his main evidence for this last assertion derives from the puritans, Philip Stubbes and William Prynne, who were hardly orthodox establishment figures. He goes on to cite the very passage from Wickham about `the relationship between Church,

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State and individual human being' which Empson deployed so centrally, adding that `the suppression was ideological in the sense that it went far beyond simply forbidding the performance of controversial material; it was also designed to predetermine the nature of all drama' (p. 23). This is followed by the observation that `in order to get beyond the hostility of the City government, playhouses were built in the suburbs, areas which, interestingly enough, were noted for discontent, rioting and opposition to authority generally', which makes it sound as if this was a consequence of the `actively ideological' policy of `suppression', rather than ± as was actually the case ± a matter of shrewd business sense, playing off the rivalry between the court and the city, by Burbage and subsequent entrepreneurs. Dollimore then belatedly picks up Wickham's theme, maintaining that the authorities (who are consistently represented as an homogenous entity, rather than the actual competing centres of power) expressed particular anxiety when stage plays became an alternative to the church. `There was here a double threat: not only were people abandoning what was then thought to be the principal institution of social discipline and control, they were frequenting instead an alternative which contradicted and challenged much of what it stood for' (p. 24). This is questionable on a number of counts. Firstly, people were not presented with a choice between the church and the theatre, `abandoning' one for the other: plays were not allowed to be performed while church services were being held, and at least a minimum attendance at the latter was required by law. Moreover, what are we to make of this `actively ideological' censorship, `designed to predetermine the nature of all drama', if it allowed through plays `which contradicted and challenged much of what [the church] stood for'? Dollimore concludes his case: Lastly, we should remember that the dramatists were actually imprisoned and otherwise harassed by the State for staging plays thought to be seditious. [. . .] There is also evidence to the effect that the dramatists fell foul of the law outside as well as inside the theatre: sedition, atheism, homosexuality and espionage are among the charges made against them. (pp. 24±5) This is provocatively phrased: `the dramatists' implies that they were all alike and all suffered equally at the hands of a repressive state. While it is true that many of them were called to account by the authorities, quite a few (as I have been arguing) appear not to have been troubled at all ± or

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at least, no trace remains of their having been so. Moreover, in the closing sentence, there is a very clear inference to be drawn (but no evidence advanced) that the way `the dramatists fell foul of the law outside [. . .] the theatre' is somehow connected with their activities within it: that they were marked men because they wrote plays. This brings us squarely back to Marlowe. To the best of my knowledge, he is the only dramatist of the period to have been accused of as many as three out of four of the `crimes' cited: atheism, homosexuality, and espionage. (In the latter case it appears that Marlowe's activities in Rheims were at the behest of the English authorities rather than aimed against them, but this was not generally understood: Rowse, pp. 27±30). The question remains, however, whether the kind of evidence assembled by the likes of Baines (which, we should remember, was never examined in any court of law) has any connection at all with Marlowe's activities as a playwright. Dollimore constructs a picture of early modern playwrights as uniformly alienated and marginalised figures, constantly subject to uniformly repressive censorship and legal harassment, bravely finding ways of voicing subversive opinions in the face of the state's thoughtpolice. Later in the book, Dr Faustus is examined as a text important for the way it shows Faustus `transgressing and demystifying the limiting structure of his world without there ever existing the possibility of his escaping it' (p. 119), its religious framework readily translatable into the malcontent sociopolitical terms of Jacobean drama. In this he flatly contradicts Empson, whose fundamental thesis was that Marlowe's Faustus did find a way of escaping God's judgement and hell. And censorship is only an issue to Dollimore in as much as it supposedly limited Marlowe's subversion to `demystifying' the issues rather than (by implication) openly speaking his mind. Nevertheless, in their different ways, Empson and Dollimore both propound variants on the construction of Marlowe as the `demonized' rebel, whose plays give voice (albeit muted by censorship) to the heterodox opinions he held in his own life. But it will be apparent that my account of the evolution of the role of the Master of the Revels challenges Dollimore's suggestion that he formed part of an ideologically coherent establishment, at odds with the fact of theatre itself, as much as it does the conspiratorial improbabilities of Empson's theory. He only existed at all because the court ± the dominant centre of power, but not the only one ± found the actors (the most successful ones, at least) useful to them, not only as entertainers but as contributors to the conspicuous self-display which was an important adjunct of power in the Renaissance. To cite again John Cocke's `character' of `A Common Player' (1615): `players may not be called

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rogues: For they bee chief ornaments of his Majesties Revells'. Within limits the Master of the Revels offered them protection rather than repression, and T.H. Howard-Hill has aptly observed that `his relationship with the players although ultimately authoritarian was more collegial than adversarial' (1988, p. 43). Tilney was thus never `the Queen's censor' in the sense that Empson implied. Like any court official, he owed his post, and the additional powers of his 1581 patent, to royal favour. But that royal favour was engineered by Tilney's cousin and patron, Lord Charles Howard (subsequently Lord Howard of Effingham, Lord Admiral and Earl of Nottingham: Streitberger, 1978, p. 20). The patronage system, with its reciprocal benefits and obligations, was designed to bind the privileged classes to the existing power structure; but in as much as it was inherently competitive (individuals vying with each other for specific posts, their more elevated patrons competing with each other for the royal ear) and since, moreover, the ties between patrons and their clients were more characteristic of an extended clan or family than of what we should describe as a political party (not even prescribing uniform religious faith), the resulting `establishment' was anything but ideologically coherent. In such a context, a `state' view on many of the central religious and political issues of the day was a meaningless concept, and Tilney, as a product and beneficiary of this factional court, never sought to enforce one as such. Rather, his censorship aimed to keep commentary within the limits tacitly accepted at court itself; it insisted on a suitable fictional veiling of topical issues, so as not to cause specific offence either to individuals of note or to friendly foreign powers; it required respect for the existing constitutional establishment, and showed concern for public order. It required pre-eminently that Tilney's own authority to draw the line be respected: the margin of what was permissible was that much greater, as long as all involved subscribed to the system of authority itself. In all of this there is no evidence that a Master of the Revels ever objected to what any playwright thought, much less that any was ever punished for his doctrines alone. This is not to say that Tilney was a lax or indulgent censor. In the only manuscript to have survived which shows his attentions, that of Sir Thomas More, his strict instructions to `leave out the insurrection wholly' and other detailed points, show that he took his responsibilities seriously. At the same time, however, it says a lot that the dramatists who worked on that play expected him to `allow' a piece on a man who had gone to the block for resisting the Queen's own father over the Act of Supremacy and was widely regarded as a Catholic martyr (though they

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are extremely discreet about the issues involved, and some tinkering by Tilney suggests that he was alert to the risks). But there is no evidence that the subject matter in itself struck Tilney as inadmissible: a telling point in weighing how far he might police the political and religious content of what he licensed. Tilney could accept, apparently with equanimity, the vigorous puritanism of a Robert Wilson as well as the tacit sympathy for a Catholic martyr shown by the authors of Sir Thomas More; he could `allow' Shakespeare's travesty of the Lollard `martyr' Sir John Oldcastle in I Henry IV (even if a latter-day holder of the Cobham title subsequently insisted that the name be changed) just as he could `allow' the much more complimentary Sir John Oldcastle plays performed by the rival Lord Admiral's Men. And ± the point of all this ± there is no evidence whatever that he objected in any shape or form to what Marlowe wrote for the stage. I say this despite Janet Clare's attempt to suggest otherwise in `Art made tongue-tied by authority': Elizabethan and Jacobean Dramatic Censorship (1990). This is a far more balanced and empirically-driven account of the subject than that deriving from Gildersleeve or Wickham and deployed to such different effects by Empson and Dollimore. But its view of the Master of the Revels is still that he was `the agent of that most arbitrary and punitive instrument of state control' (i.e. censorship, p. 215). That being so, she is inclined to detect his hand in matters which are often explicable on other grounds. This is so, again, in relation to Dr Faustus, where she argues that `the status of the so-called ``A'' version as a performance-based text, combined with the political referentiality of one of the passages absent in ``A'' and present in the ``B'' version, suggests interference by Tilney' (p. 27). The passage she singles out `is the early part of the scene in Rome depicting the humiliation of Saxon Bruno' (p. 28). Her grounds for focusing on this particular scene, among so many others also missing from the earlier printed text, are that stylistically and in subject-matter it has echoes of other work by Marlowe, that its depiction of the excommunication by a Pope of a German Emperor would be too strong meat in the early 1590s, given Pius V's excommunication of Elizabeth in 1570, but might be less contentious later; and that the name Bruno, not in the historical sources, might have been `intended [as] an allusion which would have appealed to the more initiated in his audience' to Giordano Bruno, the unorthodox Dominican philosopher and heretic magician imprisoned by the Holy Office in May 1592. This is in fact a tottering edifice of suppositions to get around the fact that by far the likeliest explanation for the existence of this scene (as

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others) in the B text but not in the A is that of the `adicyones in doctor fostes' for which Philip Henslowe paid Birde and Rowley in November 1602. If it indeed echoes Marlovian themes and style, this is hardly surprising since these men were writing for the company that had all his major works in their repertoire, and they were specifically adding to one of his best known works: an element of pastiche or imitation was only too likely. If indeed papal excommunication was a less touchy issue later rather than sooner (a debatable contention given the height of antiCatholic feeling that remained at least until the time of the Gunpowder Plot) it is all the more likely that the scene was written later, rather than censored from an early version and revived later. If there is an allusion to Giordano Bruno, it is more likely to have resonated after his execution at the stake in 1600 (the death with which `Saxon Bruno' is threatened in the text (B, 3.1.183±4)) rather than mere imprisonment in 1592. Saxon Bruno's escape from that fate, apparently engineered by Mephostophilis, would thus add topical defiance to Faustus's mockery of the Pope, though the fact that Giordano Bruno had not so escaped would also foreshadow the fate of the magician Faustus. Furthermore, the incidents involving `Saxon Bruno' are derived from Foxe's Acts and Monuments (i.e. The Book of Martyrs), which Samuel Rowley is known to have used as a source for scenes of Lutheran intrigue in his When You Know Me (Marlowe, 1993, p. 72). In short, the case for seeing the scene as a late addition is far more compelling than that for seeing something of Marlowe's own hand in it, while the case for supposing Tilney's involvement here as an agent of that `most arbitrary and punitive instrument of state control' is itself arbitrary and tendentious. Empson, Wickham, Dollimore and Clare all go out of their ways to construct either a view of censorship that suits their assumptions about Marlowe, or a view of Marlowe that suits their assumptions about censorship. And it is not hard to find others who, less systematically, envisage Marlowe in a particularly fraught relationship with the Master of the Revels. Catherine Minshull, for example, argues: `There is considerable precedent for the theory that Marlowe adopted an indirect, ironic strategy to outwit censorship', while John D. Cox insists that `it is important to acknowledge at the outset that an open declaration of dissent was impossible for Marlowe, or any other contemporary playwright who valued his freedom to write or even to live' (Minshull 1990, p. 194; Cox, p. 47). Both go on to argue that Dr Faustus is far more heterodox than its superficially orthodox morality-play structure suggests. And I would not want to dissent from this view. What I am questioning is the implication in such instances that Marlowe was somehow different or

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special in adopting such strategies, a marked man who had to find particularly ingenious ways around intimidating censorship. Wherever we look in early modern drama we find dramatists writing obliquely or analogically about their subjects ± and censors, for the most part, policing the appropriateness of their encoding (what modern jargon would call the degree of deniability) rather than conducting witch hunts against dissident authors. Marlowe was no different from his fellow dramatists in this, nor is there any evidence he was treated differently. Against deeply entrenched assumptions it is sometimes necessary to state the obvious even more forcefully than usual. In the case of Marlowe we know, with quite exceptional specificity, that virtually all his plays were performed, and remained long in the repertoire, because they were either written for, or subsequently acquired by, companies with whom Henslowe was involved. The only exception is Dido Queen of Carthage, and even for that the title page of the 1594 Quarto assures us that it was `Played by the Children of her Majesties Chappell': as much evidence of actual performance as we have for most plays of the period. As these plays have survived in print, even if the texts of Dr Faustus and The Massacre at Paris are manifestly unsatisfactory, there is nothing whatever to associate the mangling of their limbs with censorship. The gruesome and demeaning death of Marlowe's Edward II (unlike the abdication of Shakespeare's Richard II) had unequivocally been `allowed' on the stage by Tilney and published in 1594: not what we would expect of a `Queen's censor', dedicated to preserving the mystique of absolute monarchy. Moreover, Edward Alleyn built much of a prosperous career on playing major Marlovian roles ± certainly Tamburlaine and the Jew of Malta, probably Faustus ± and this does not appear to have impeded his progress to a pious and respectable old age, Master of the Royal Game of Bulls, Bears, and Dog Mastiffs and founder of the College of God's Gift at Dulwich. In short, the notion that Marlowe's plays were themselves dangerous properties, either mangled by a censor or barely the survivors of his ideologically rigorous attentions, is a myth, one vicariously fuelled by the image of Marlowe himself as an Icarus-style over-reacher, and everything which that image in turn implies about the era in which he lived. If we pause to separate the man from the works, we can see that timing itself may well be responsible for the lasting force of the vivid configuration of Marlowe as the rebellious `outsider'. Yes, the Privy Council had issued a warrant for his arrest on 18 May 1593. But two days later `Christopher Marlowe of London, gentleman, being sent for by warrant from their lordships, hath entered his appearance for his indemnity therein; and is commanded to give his daily attendance on their

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lordships until he shall be licensed to the contrary' (Rowse, p. 192). Unlike his former room-mate, Thomas Kyd, who had been precipitately imprisoned for his supposed involvement in the touchy subject of antiimmigrant propaganda, Marlowe himself was formally recognised in his status as a gentleman and allowed to remain at liberty. Kyd's papers had been searched, and among them were found `vile heretical conceits denying the deity of Jesus Christ our Saviour', apparently fragments of a Socinian treatise, which Kyd (under torture, and doubtless in fear of his own life) claimed had belonged to Marlowe and been accidentally shuffled with his own papers when they lodged together. He does not seem to have claimed that Marlowe wrote the treatise, but the latter's association with it may have precipitated the order for his arrest. It is entirely possible, however, that Marlowe himself was only marginal to the Privy Council's anxiety: that they were most concerned about the anti-immigrant propaganda, an inflammatory issue with immediate public order implications. It is a striking feature of Edmond Tilney's response to Sir Thomas More that he seems to have been more immediately concerned with its depiction of anti-alien `insurrection' in London than he was with the religious and political sympathies of the charismatic central figure (Long). If the first draft of that play (the only version that Tilney saw, or at least commented on) belongs to the period of Marlowe's death ± as many have argued, though I have not seen this connection drawn before ± we may see anti-alien agitation as a central preoccupation of the authorities at this time, and rather more pressing business than damnable opinions or Socinian treatises. They may well have been particularly anxious to identify influential men (Northumberland, Ralegh, Walsingham?) shielding those involved in such agitation. Their interest in Marlowe may not have extended beyond the help he could give them in furthering such enquiries. But the sudden and violent death ten days later, while the warrant was still in force, left the matter unresolved, and has left imaginations to dwell on it ever since. No one can pretend that Marlowe was an easy man to live with. Even allowing for prejudice, hearsay, and sensationalism, there is evidence enough that he had a quick temper, was involved in the hot-blooded death of one man (William Bradley) and suspect activities like `coining', had some dubious associates, and was not averse to voicing provocatively opinions that at least some people would find offensive. But this is some way short of the marginalised rebel which he is so often held to be ± and not only by those who like to think of themselves as marginalised rebels. E.M.W. Tillyard, the very antithesis of such rebellion, allowed Marlowe two grudging entries in his long-influential Elizabethan World

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Picture and then only to emphasise how `exceptional' is a passage on the warring of the elements in Tamburlaine from which he quotes. Figures like Sir John Davies and even `one of the more pedestrian poets, Davies of Hereford' are accorded far more centrality and representative status (pp. 31, 62). By concentrating on the lack of censorship, so far as we can determine, on the fact that his works were allowed on to the stage and into print, with minimal apparent interference, I wish to query just how marginal as a writer (and possibly even as a person) Marlowe actually was, just how ostracised in fact by his own contemporaries, just how intellectually eccentric: to ask whether it is not more reasonable to consider him, even if somewhat unorthodox, as well within the spectrum of opinion that authority `allowed'. In this context I have to question again the formulations of both Minshull and Cox, who both contrive (writing of Dr Faustus) to argue that Marlowe said the opposite of what he meant as a way of avoiding censorship: `By means of [a] rebelious subtext, he portrays the exercise of absolutist authority as repressive, entrenched, unjust, and implaccable. To escape censorship, his attack had necessarily to be indirect, and goes unnoticed if the play is approached from an orthodox standpoint. The subtext becomes intelligible if the play is read in the context of the extremely unorthodox views which Marlowe is on record as holding' (Minshull, 1990, p. 205). I began, of course, by questioning such readings of the-man-in-the-works. `The dramaturgical appearance of conformity may in fact have been a stalking horse for defiance' (Cox, p. 47). What finally seems most questionable is the implicit assumption that Tilney would have been blind to a stratagem transparent to modern critics. Simon Shepherd is surely more to the point in Marlowe and the Politics of Elizabethan Theatre, where he questions over-easy assumptions about the `demonized' or heretical Marlowe and emphasises the centrality ± one might almost say normality ± of the dramatist's concerns as an educated Elizabethan, though one sceptical of the age's pieties, especially as represented on the stage. Instead of fictionalising a man intent on saying the unsayable, Shepherd outlines a far more credible mode of dissent: `The Marlowe texts could be said to take a number of ideological truths of the Elizabethan theatre and reveal them to be discourses, and to show those discourses spoken within power relations' (p. 210). Which is to say that they did what many other texts of the period did, only better than most. Such a formulation convincingly places Marlowe where he surely belongs, at the centre of Elizabethan culture, not set apart as a romanticised or alienated rebel, and not reduced to playing games with his censors.

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For the record, it should be acknowledged that Marlowe may not entirely have escaped the attentions of the Master of the Revels after his death. The hand of the censor seems evident in one particular: the B text of Dr Faustus may have been at least partially revised to bring it into conformity with the 1606 Act `to Restrain Abuses of Players', which made it law that `if at any tyme or tymes [. . .] any person or persons do or shall in any Stage play [. . .] jestingly or profanely speake or use the holy Name of God or of Christ Jesus, or of the Holy Ghoste or of the Trinitie, which are not to be spoken but with feare and reverence, shall forfeite for everie such Offence by him or them committed Tenne Pounde' (Marlowe, 1990, p. xvii). So the 1616 text loses the riveting: `See, see where Christ's blood streams in the firmament! / One drop would save my soul, half a drop. Ah, my Christ!' (A, 5.2.78±9) for a barely intelligible `One drop of blood will save me. O, my Christ!' (B, 5.2.151), while `and see where God / Stretcheth out his arm and bends his ireful brows!' (A, 5.2.82±3) becomes more blandly `And see, a threat'ning arm, an angry brow' (B, 5.2.155). There are some cuts and many other minor amendments, which may also be ascribable to this, such as: (A, 1.3.54) `Is stoutly to abjure the Trinity' [B, 1.3.51: `abjure all godliness']; (A, 2.1.78) `If unto God [B, 2.1.78: `unto heaven'] he'll throw thee down'; (A, 5.2.120) `My God, my God [B, 5.2.188: `O, mercy, heaven'], look not so fierce on me!' Thinking once more of Empson, it is difficult to conceive of Tilney or his successor, Buc, simultaneously tidying up such theological minutiae and relaxing their standards on what they saw as outand-out heresy. But Janet Clare sees more in these changes than I do: `The extent and nature of the censorship of the ``B'' text ± beyond simple expurgation of oaths ± suggest that [. . .] it was [. . .] censored in accordance with recent legislation and what seems to be a more pronounced anti-Catholic attitude toward doctrinal issues and sacred reference on stage' (p. 106). Yet the fact is that the whole revision of the play is anti-Catholic in emphasis. `Thematically, the B-text moves intentionally in the direction of . . . jingoistic anti-papal feeling . . . Faustus is an anti-papal hero' (Marlowe, 1993 , p. 47). And it could be that some of the changes which may relate to the Act of Abuses were actually the work of those who revised it (notably Rowley and Birde), who seem to have transcribed the whole text. It is certainly the case that the revisers introduced profanities, even as they may have eliminated others. Only in the B text do we find `Snails' (2.2.11), `By Lady' (3.3.38), `Sblood' (4.1.152, 164) and `Zounds' (4.1.87, 132, 138 and 150; 4.2.67 and 4.3.13) ± the latter even though an alternative form, `Swounds' (A text, 1.4.30) disappears (Marlowe, 1993,

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pp. 75±6). The Act of Abuses is just about the clearest directive that Tilney and his successors were ever issued with, and all the evidence is that they enforced it, though sometimes they only made exemplary amendments, intending that the actors or their book-keepers should make a thorough job of it (see Chapter 3 `Obscenity and Profanity', pp. 48±9, on Herbert's attention to such matters). Possibly that is what happened with the B text of Dr Faustus. But the Rowley/Birde revisions to the text were made before the Act was introduced, and it only ever applied to performance, not to print. Tilney should certainly have seen the revised text before the performance in 1602, but he or Buc would only have enforced the Act of Abuses on it if the play was revised again after 1606, which is entirely possible. It is also possible that, even if the play was not formally re-licensed, the actors would have felt it prudent themselves to bring the text into line with acceptable practice for performance, in ways that may have left a mark (albeit not necessarily a consistent one) on the version actually printed in 1616. In short, even this posthumous intervention by the Master of the Revels in the works of Marlowe is less clear-cut than may at first seem to be the case. And even if we do accept that he had a small hand in the changes to this text, it is a trivial detail in the face of the provocation which Marlowe is conventionally held to have represented, and no more than other dramatists were subjected to. To take only one example: Othello was produced at court in 1604±5, before the Act of Abuses. A version of the text from that period got into print as late as 1622, presumably because the Act did not apply to printed texts, though some confusion at the time about the authority to license play-texts for the press may also have had a bearing. Tilney's successor, Sir George Buc, had acquired that authority even before Tilney's death, but lost control over the process in his later years, when he was under tremendous pressure and went mad. It took his successors, Sir John Astley and Sir Henry Herbert, some time to fully re-assert their authority in this sphere. Nevertheless, the text of Othello in the 1623 folio fully conforms with the Act of Abuses (far more so than the 1616 Dr Faustus). Possibly Heminge and Condell were being particularly scrupulous in connection with a volume dedicated to the Lord Chamberlain (and his brother), the court superior of the Master of the Revels. More likely they were following, at least in this respect, the King's Men's current `allowed copy' of the play. We know that Othello was in their repertoire as late as 1613, when it was again presented at court. For that Buc would have insisted that it conform with the Act.

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So, as far as we know, the plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare received identical treatment from their licensers and censors. The `readings' of Tilney and Buc that implicitly underlay their `allowance' of Marlowe's plays are not as forceful as those of Harvey and Beard, nor necessarily as respectful as those of Jones and Blount. But in some respects they might lay claim to be more representative than any of them. It is the normality of the treatment Marlowe received as a writer that stands out, ironically casting shadows over the long-perceived normality of attention accorded to Shakespeare. The testimony of the censors, in as far as we can know it, calls into question the traditional construction of the ideological relationship between those exact contemporaries from Canterbury and Stratford, the one a perfect heretic, the other a perfect conformist.

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5

Why did Shakespeare not print his own plays? There is a fair consensus that he did not, though 13 of them were printed in his own lifetime, in texts that editors have generally agreed are based on the author's papers or a good playhouse copy.1 Yet hardly anyone has supposed that Shakespeare actively saw them into print. This is one of those `facts' about Shakespeare's career usually taken quietly for granted. In the course of this chapter I shall review a number of these, arguing that they need to be re-assessed in the light of recent thinking about early modern culture and the place of Shakespeare's career within it. In particular, I shall be considering: the copyright of play-texts and how it related to their licensing; the relationship between acting companies and their retained playwrights; and the practice of circulating play-texts in manuscript. Shakespeare clearly was responsible for the publication of Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594), both of which carried signed dedications to the Earl of Southampton, and were printed by his fellow Stratfordian, Richard Field. Yet Field had no hand in the printing of any of the plays; none of the play-texts until Love's Labour's Lost (1598) even had an indication of authorship; and none in Shakespeare's lifetime carried an author's preface or commendations from friends, the usual marks of the writer's personal involvement. Shakespeare was not shy of print, it seems, only of printing plays (and perhaps sonnets).2 Why this should be so is still a subject for conjecture. For some scholars, only staging mattered to Shakespeare; Leeds Barroll, for instance, argues that Shakespeare wrote plays only when he could anticipate immediate performance: `Denied the visual and auditory realization of his plays on stage, Shakespeare's creative drive for drama seems to have faltered' (Barroll, 1991a, p. 17). For others, legal and practical restraints also deflected Shakespeare from print, with most of the evidence revolving around three commonly-agreed facts: copyright belonged to the acting 90

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i) Copyright G.E. Bentley seeks to order this evidence by suggesting that the actors had different contractual arrangements with writers who were retained as `ordinary poets' and those who wrote for them only on an occasional basis. Shakespeare's understanding with the King's Men, he argues, is likely to have concurred with the stipulation in the one contract for an `ordinary poet' of which we have documentary evidence (Richard Brome's with Salisbury Court), which states that the author `should not suffer any play made or to be made or composed by him' for the company to be printed with his consent or knowledge, `without the license from the said company or the major part of them' (Haaker, p. 298: text modernised). Other writers, who had no such contractual relationships, seem to have suffered few restrictions on their rights to sell their scripts to a printer (though it is not impossible that they had to agree to a lower fee in return); and though they may have been expected to observe some delay between first performance and publication, even this is doubtful in many instances. The obvious question, therefore, is why the actors should expect some of their writers to observe this restraint and others not. A play was just a play, and its commercial value was never more than marginally related to the person who actually wrote it. We may deduce that freelance authors had permission to print from the fact that they frequently wrote again for companies whose plays they had published. Jonson, for example, printed Every Man Out of His Humour in 1600 and Every Man In His Humour in 1601, but was employed again by the King's Men for Sejanus, Volpone, The Alchemist and Catiline, all printed within two years of their performance, then re-published in Jonson's 1616 Works. While Sejanus and Catiline were failures in the theatre, and so might not have been regarded as `viable' stage-pieces, this is not true of the majority. Both Every Man plays were in the King's Men repertoire in 1605 and performed at court, with Every Man In revived as late as 1631. This suggests that the companies thought them valuable stage properties, and calls into question the common explanation that actors were reluctant to have plays printed which were still successful on stage. This view was championed by E.K. Chambers, citing the Epistle to The English Traveller (1633), where Heywood observes that some of his plays

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companies, not to the author; and though the companies condoned the printing of many of their plays, others they were clearly reluctant to have published (Chambers, 3, pp. 177±92; Albright, 1927a., pp. 217±61; Bentley, 1971, pp. 264±92).3

`are still retained in the hands of some actors, who think it against their peculiar profit to have them come in print' (3, pp. 183, 339). Heywood's wording here suggest that only some, and not all, actors took this view of the matter, which may reflect his different contractual experiences as a freelance and `ordinary poet'. Chambers, however, goes on to speculate that `Presumably the danger was not so much that readers would not become spectators, as that other companies might buy the plays and act them', a supposition which is commonly accepted as fact. To take an example almost at random, J.R. Mulryne seeks to explain the 30-year delay in the publication of Middleton's Women Beware Women in these terms: `It is tempting to guess that the players were unwilling to allow into print one of their best properties', adding in a note, `[a]s was often the case, they may not have wished to have the play published and thus made available to rival companies'.4 Yet our (admittedly limited) knowledge of performance histories down to the closing of the theatres suggests that this supposed threat was minimal. To pursue the case of Jonson, for example: with one exception (a Dublin performance of The Alchemist between 1637 and 1640) there is no evidence that any acting company other than the King's Men attempted to stage the plays mentioned above, even though they were in print, and no commercial rival exploited their availability in London where it really mattered. The same is true of plays by Shakespeare, which were all in print by 1623. There are records of amateur and provincial performances of Richard II and Hamlet in 1607±8 by the company of the Dragon of Sierra Leone, and of Pericles and King Lear by Sir Richard Cholmeley's players in Yorkshire in 1610, and possibly of Hamlet by Queen Anne's Men in Oxford in 1607, and by a group at Newcastle in the same year. But none challenges the King's Men's exclusive right to profitable London performances. Such challenges were rare, I would argue, because the danger Chambers presumed did not exist. When the Master of the Revels granted a licence to perform a play it was specific to the companies which acquired it, and could only be passed on to others with their consent. In granting a licence Sir Henry Herbert always records the name of the company or, occasionally, of the theatre where that company performed (e.g. `August [i.e. 1623]. A Tragedy of the Plantation of Virginia . . . for the companye at the Curtune': Herbert, p. 141). Herbert was not issuing a general licence for the play: he was conferring on a known company, with a known playhouse, the exclusive right of performance ± at least in the London region ± and any deviation from this understanding would be an affront to his authority. The few surviving office-book entries by Herbert's

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predecessor, Sir John Astley, are less consistent in format but at times even more conclusive in wording (Herbert, pp. 136±41). Herbert's papers also demonstrate how the passing on of performance rights was regulated. Several circumstances required further clearance from the Master of the Revels, as when a company wished to adopt a play formerly licensed to someone else (Dutton, 1991, pp. 94±6). An office-book entry for 21 August 1623 records: `. An Old Play called Matche mee in London formerly allowed by Sir George Buck' (Herbert, p. 143). This records a transfer of performing rights, since the play, written by Dekker c. 1611±13 for Queen Anne's Men (defunct by 1623), was not printed until 1631. A similar process presumably governed boy company plays which passed into the adult repertoire, though no records have survived. Fletcher's The Scornful Lady and Jonson's The Silent Woman were both first printed in 1616. The former had passed to the King's Men by 1625, when a reprint announced them on the title-page as the acting company. The Silent Woman had probably passed to the King's Men when it was considered for performance at court in 1619±20; and certainly had done so when it was performed there twice in 1636 (Kawachi, pp. 180, 224±5). Both works demonstrate that a play was not liable to unlicensed appropriation simply because it was in print, even when the original licensees were defunct: they both passed in an orderly way to a new licenceholder. They also demonstrate that publication need not diminish commercial viability in the theatre. One notorious instance of a company appearing not to respect licensed performing rights, and to take advantage of the fact that a rival company's play was in print, is the King's Men's performance of Marston's The Malcontent. This apparently occurred after the first of its three printings in 1604, since Webster's `additions acted by the King's Majesty's Servants' were not available to the press until the third edition. Webster's dialogue for the actors `playing' themselves is quite unabashed about what had happened: Sly . . . I would know how you came by this play.

Condell Faith, sir, the book was lost; and, because `twas pity so good a

play should be lost, we found it, and play it. Sly I wonder you would play it, another company having interest in it. Condell Why not Malevole in folio with us, as Jeronimo in decimosexto with them? They taught us a name for our play: we call it One for another. Induction, 72±80 (Marston, 1975)

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As Sly points out, the performing rights to the play still reside with the Blackfriars company, the Children of the Queen's Revels. Condell makes light of this, implying that it is a quid pro quo for that troupe having played `Jeronimo', presumably a lost King's Men's play on a theme related to The Spanish Tragedy (since the company did not themselves own that play). What the Induction does not settle categorically is whether these appropriations were by mutual consent, or forms of piracy: Condell implies the latter, but this could very easily be an in-joke. If the former, my case about the protection of performing right is not affected: there are known instances of adult and boys companies sharing in a play, and apparently both performing it, most notably the collaboration of the Lord Chamberlain's Men and Paul's Boys over Dekker's Satiromastix. If the latter (piracy), it is the dating which provides the likeliest explanation for the irregularity. The Children of the Chapel Royal were re-incorporated in February 1604 as the Children of the Queen's Revels, at which point they left the control of the Master of the Revels and were given their own licenser. Their patent specifies `that noe such playes or Shewes shalbee presented . . . or by them any where publiqelie acted but by the approbacion and allowaunce of Samuell Danyell' (Chambers, 2, p. 49). As I have argued elsewhere, this division of the authority for dramatic licensing in part explains the controversial theatrical activity early in the reign of James I, so much of it centring upon the Blackfriars company in its various guises (Dutton, 1991, pp. 164±93).5 So the circumstances in which the King's Men appropriated The Malcontent were so unusual as to be exceptional, with a real possibility of friction between the licensing authorities themselves, which the actors may have exploited. The case is an exception that proves the rule, significant in its rarity, not as evidence of what was commonly likely to befall plays appearing in print.

ii) `Ordinary Poets' Given the evidence that printing plays did not make them more liable to piracy by rival companies, and did not necessarily reduce their audience appeal, we can understand E.M. Albright's conclusion that `the probability is, that there was no such widespread and constant objection to publication as has been supposed' (1927a, p. 283). Yet Heywood did observe that `some actors . . . think it against their peculiar profit to have them come in print'. It is possible that those who had paid good money for a play were less certain than I can now be that publication would not reduce its value. After all, the late revivals of the Jonson plays

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I have mentioned may represent an after-life created specifically by their earlier circulation in print ± but no one could have predicted such an outcome when they first released the copyright. More compelling, however, is G.E. Bentley's evidence that it was the works of contracted `ordinary poets' that companies were particularly anxious to keep out of print. It is clear that this was due to the companies, rather than to the writers themselves, since men like Fletcher, Heywood and Brome were quite willing to help plays into print (as we see from their signed prefaces) which were not the product of their work as contracted `ordinary poets', in those instances behaving exactly like freelancers such as Jonson (Bentley, 1971, pp. 267±8, 227, 281±4). Shakespeare, however ± always the exception ± never seems to have been other than a retained author in the period from 1594, when we can really trace his career. Reviewing the total picture of which plays got into print, and when, one is almost drawn to the conclusion ± contrary to the received wisdom ± that the plays of such authors were the only ones to which the companies held a copyright respected by the Stationers' Company and the licensers for the press, since there is no apparent consistency to the way in which plays by other authors were or were not allowed into print. (Actually, this could never be gauged accurately, since there is no telling how many plays would never have been printed simply because there was no demand for them). The evidence, however, will not sustain so categorical a conclusion, though it does seem that the works of `ordinary poets' were more rigorously denied the press than those of other authors. In 1600 the almost systematic piracy of play-books by unscrupulous printers was a possibility, and the principal companies of the day, the Lord Admiral's and Lord Chamberlain's Men, took steps to forestall it. On 28 March Henslowe put up for the former the not inconsiderable sum of £2 for the `stayinge of printinge' of Patient Grissell, while the Lord Chamberlain's Men had `staying' entries in the Stationers' Register on 27 May and 4 August (Arber, 3, pp. 36±7, 167). There is no evidence that the companies were resisting print per se; it seems likely that they were trying to preclude unauthorised publication by establishing prior copyright. My point is that the Lord Chamberlain's Men acted to protect plays written by Jonson (Every Man In His Humour) and two anonymous authors, as well as recent work by their `ordinary poet', Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing and Henry V ). Henslowe's papers reveal no individual enjoying the special position reflected in the Brome contract, and apparently enjoyed by Shakespeare, but he was still prepared to protect copyrights.6

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The fact that the Henslowe papers, our fullest information about the business of play-writing in the period, contain no example of anyone employed on this exclusive basis doubtless colours our sense of what was normal. Part of the continuing success of the Lord Chamberlain's/King's Men, however ± answerable to no entrepreneur like Henslowe ± must be ascribed to their shrewd retention of one popular and proficient `ordinary poet' after another, a practice which must subtly have coloured their corporate ethos. Though a more convenient and assured way of acquiring suitable plays than ad hoc commissioning, it perhaps led to payments above the market rate. It is difficult to be sure of this, since our knowledge of the going-rate for plays throughout the period is patchy, and the relativities of the figures we do have must be heavily distorted by inflation (Bentley, 1971, pp. 97±108). Moreover, retained authors were not paid by the play but mainly by a weekly wage, for which they undertook to produce a specified number of plays annually (in Brome's case three, in Shakespeare's probably two). This makes real comparisons all but impossible. But it must be significant (a point overlooked by Bentley) that the injunction against Brome printing his plays without the permission of the company, noted above, was not part of his first contract with the Salisbury Court, negotiated in July 1635; it was part of the renegotiation of the contract in August 1638, when his salary was also raised from 15 to 20 shillings a week. This may suggest that such injunctions were not always a feature of the contracts of `ordinary poets', but perhaps became so when such contracts involved a salary above the market rate. In Brome's case this seems to have followed what amounts to an initial trial period with the company ± one, as it happens, not without mutal recriminations at law, which in some respects the new contract was intended to resolve. In 1594 Shakespeare was already a very well established dramatist, by some way the most successful of those who continued to write for the theatres after the plague of 1593±94, following the deaths of Greene, Marlowe and Kyd, and various other defections. It would have been shrewd sense for the Lord Chamberlain's Men to retain his services on the most attractive terms they could muster. Even so, in such a context, it might have seemed reasonable to put some restrictions on the right to print plays, in return for secure and relatively handsome remuneration. Perhaps more important than the financial implications of a copyright was how it related to the co-operative structure of the acting company. `The London companies after about 1580 consisted of a core of between eight and twelve co-owning players, ``sharers'' in both profits and costs'

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(Gurr, 1970, p. 46). Verbal agreements became more formalised, carrying stipulations such as those agreed to by the actor Robert Dawes and Henslowe: penalties for turning up late, or missing rehearsals or performances, or being drunk when he should be performing. Penalties were measured in pence or shillings, rising to a maximum of a pound, save for a £40 penalty for absconding with costumes or props (Chambers, 2, pp. 256±71). This particular agreement says nothing about play-books and their copyright, though these may have been classed as `propertie'. The contract for the sharers in the King's Revels company at the Whitefriars theatre is more explicit. The specific prohibition against putting the company's plays into print without permission is part of a much wider set of understandings about its property (Chambers, 2, p. 65). The swingeing penalties ± £40 or loss of the entire share ± were clearly not ways of dealing with minor infringements such as turning up drunk. They were part of a wider attempt to define the company and its standards, exercises in corporate bonding. It is important to bear in mind that these agreements cited relate to sharers in an acting and/or theatre company, often, though not always, actors themselves: not specifically to the writers of their plays, who would not normally be members of the company in anything like the same sense. Brome, for example, was never a sharer in Salisbury Court only an employee. The most he stood to lose, if he broke his agreement, was employment ± unless (as actually happened) he was sued for breach of contract, where the issue was putative loss of earnings to the company through dereliction and bad faith, not a penalty for breaching the company's own code of conduct (Haaker). This was presumably also true of other `ordinary poets' like Fletcher and Massinger. But Shakespeare was significantly different, since from the inception of the Lord Chamberlain's Men in 1594 he was a shareholder ± and sufficiently senior to be, along with Richard Burbage and Will Kempe, trusted to receive payment from court on the company's behalf. In due course he was also a shareholder in the Globe and Blackfriars' theatres, companies whose membership significantly overlapped with that of the acting company which performed in them. Of those who signed the syndicate agreement for the Globe of 21 February 1599, five besides Shakespeare were actors. We do not know precisely what constraints any `sharing' agreements placed on Shakespeare. But if we compare the Whitefriars theatre contract, Henslowe's agreement with Dawes, and the Brome contract, we conclude that he was bound by constraints of corporate bonding virtually unparalleled in the period. Since these constraints commonly seem to have put an embargo on the printing of corporately-owned

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play-books for both shareholders and `ordinary poets', Shakespeare must have felt massively restricted. As I have argued, there is little evidence that the printing of plays did actually reduce their value as theatre pieces. But we see in the Whitefriars contract concerns that run deeper. Draconian penalties awaiting anyone who, without common consent, removed company property `exceeding the value of two shillings' bespeak a need to put corporate interests above individual desires. In such a context the inviolability of the `ordinary poet's' plays might take on an almost fetishistic significance, disproportionate to their strict commercial value. They were, so to speak, the company's family silver, not to be traded in by any of the sharers, even the author. Works commissioned from freelancers such as Jonson would never have the same value to the corporate psyche, even though it would be prudent (as in 1600) to guard such properties against outright piracy. The short answer, then, to why Shakespeare never published his own plays is quite likely to be that he was a company man, too identified with an ethos in which any removal of company property warranted expulsion from its ranks, too bound to a small group by ties that went beyond a mere contractual framework, if the bequests in his will to Burbage, Heminge and Condell of money to buy rings denote real friendship. Perhaps the strongest corroboration we can find for the strength of company affiliations comes from the only other man in the period to occupy anything like the same position, Thomas Heywood. The Queen's Men copied the Globe arrangements; some of the actor-shareholders also became sharers in `the house', the Red Bull (Chambers, 1, p. 357). Heywood was one of these, and also their `ordinary poet'. Throughout a long career, in which he famously claimed to have written or `had a main finger' in 220 plays (address to the reader in The English Traveller), barely 20 found their way into print. The 1608 quarto of The Rape of Lucrece stands out because, as Heywood was aware, it is the one instance where publication cut across his contractual status at the time as an `ordinary poet': Though some have used a double sale of their labors, first to the stage and after to the press, for my own part I here proclaim myself ever faithful to the first [i.e. Queen Anne's company] and never guilty of the last. Yet because of the threatened illicit publication of a mangled version Heywood was willing to print the play correctly, with the permission of the rightful owners, Queen Anne's company (Bentley, 1971, p. 282).

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There is an element of disingenuousness about this disclaimer. If Heywood truly discovered that it was `accidentally' coming into the hands of the printers (along, apparently, with others not contractually bound) he could, with the rest of the company, assert their true copyright with the Stationers' Company. For whatever reason, Heywood must have wanted to see it in print. Nonetheless, he felt it necessary to assert publicly that his decision to supply an accurate copy has the full `consent' of other members of the company, to which he himself has been `ever faithful'. Since Shakespeare never even condescended to supply prefaces of this nature, we cannot be certain that he did not actually co-operate with the printers in this way, only that he never advertised the fact. Yet the history of Shakespeare editing is littered with suggestions that some of the quartos (e.g. 2 Henry IV, Much Ado About Nothing, the 1599 Romeo and Juliet) are based on the author's `foul papers', though no one has squared this with the orthodox view that he played no part in their publication. If Shakespeare's `foul papers' found their way to the print-shops, the supposition seems to be, it must be from the playhouse, not from his study, and not by his hands. The fact that `foul papers' or prompt-copies of so many reputable texts reached the printers probably challenges the assumption that the Lord Chamberlain's Men were implacably opposed to their `ordinary poet's' work appearing in print. There have been numerous explanations for certain specific `breaches'. Andrew Gurr has argued persuasively that the shareholders might have released Richard III, Love's Labour's Lost and 1 Henry IV for print in 1597±98 only because they faced a financial crisis when unable to use either the Burbages' new Blackfriars venue or the Theatre (Gurr, 1988). And it had been suggested more than once that the appearance of a `good' quarto in the wake of a `bad' one (the 1599 Romeo and Juliet and the 1604±5 Hamlet are examples) may reflect the company's preference, once the issue had been forced, to sanction respectable texts rather than let their own and their poet's reputation be sullied by the travesties already in print. (Though if so, we have to ask why they did not also do so in the case of, say, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Or did not do so until the 1623 folio).

iii) Manuscript circulation All in all, however, too many reputable Shakespeare texts found their way into print for it to be entirely credible that they did so as a result of ad hoc company decisions, contravening their apparent general policy. And even if we accept that there were compelling corporate pressures against Shakespeare as an individual going into print (whatever the

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company as a whole may, from time to time, have decided) that is not evidence that he was indifferent to his plays as works to be read. I am thinking here of the circulation of plays in manuscript. This, again, is supposed not to have happened. As Leeds Barroll puts it: `Before Shakespeare's death, public stage plays were seldom composed to be circulated in manuscripts or in printed books as was, say Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia or Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene' (1991a, p. 16). But if much of the evidence for this practice applies to plays dating from after Shakespeare's death, it is only because theatrical documentation is much fuller for the later period, and more manuscripts of all sorts found their way into collections where they were respected and preserved. There is no real reason to suppose that the circulation of commercial play-scripts changed significantly between, say, 1590 and 1642. We know, of course, that it happened with A Game at Chess. No fewer than six manuscripts of that play have survived, none of them the licensed playhouse copy. The existence of so many copies of the play may, of course, be ascribed to the phenomenal interest it aroused, something which Middleton perhaps anticipated and made arrangements to cash in on.7 Yet if the scandal over the play prompted manuscripts in unusual numbers (how many were lost if six actually survive?), it does not follow that it was unusual per se for transcripts to be made in this way. Beaumont and Fletcher's A King and No King, dating from 1611 when Shakespeare was still active, was printed in 1619, apparently from a manuscript copy supplied by Sir Thomas Neville. Similarly, Ralph Crane copied both Middleton's The Witch (c. 1609±16) and Fletcher's popular Demetrius and Enanthe as presentation copies. As F.P. Wilson observed, `it is curious that so notable a get-penny as Demetrius and Enanthe should have been allowed to stray outside the playhouse, and should have existed in a private transcript twenty-two years before it got into print' (p. 149). But is it really so curious? Humphrey Moseley's preface to his monumental first folio of Beaumont and Fletcher (1647) contains two remarkable admissions: that The Wilde Goose Chase was lost when `a Person of Quality borrowed it from the Actours', and that the actors commonly omitted passages of plays for performance ± but that when `private friends desir'd a Copy, they then (and justly too) transcribed what they Acted' (Beaumont and Fletcher, 1905±12, 1, p. xiii). This suggests practices that were relatively commonplace and of long-standing, and implies an altogether more relaxed attitude than is commonly supposed to the distribution of manuscript copies of even the most popular plays, though they were still barred from print. More importantly, it also

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suggests that there was an understanding that the text supplied by the author, and that performed by the actors (which would be the one licensed by the Master of the Revels) enjoyed a different status. Moseley actually makes a selling-point of his care to print complete texts, perhaps implying that these always enjoyed more cachet with discerning readers: `the Care & Pains was wholly mine, which I find to be more than you'l easily imagine, unless you knew into how many hands the Originalls were dispersed' (p. xiv). The actors, then, were quite careless about preserving the texts as they were originally written (though these had some cachet among readers), but fairly ready to supply copies of what they actually performed (which was commonly different). Six Beaumont and Fletcher manuscripts seem to have survived only because copies were made in this way. Moseley's defensive `and justly too' even suggests that it would have been improper of the actors deliberately to circulate more than the acting text, that the originals still belong in some way (presumably) to their authors. Might such practices have gone on during Shakespeare's lifetime? It will be objected that all this was years after his death, when stage-plays supposedly enjoyed a social cachet unimaginable earlier. Besides, no texts by Shakespeare or his immediate contemporaries have survived by anything like these practices. But the survival of any theatrical manuscript from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, as I have already argued, is rare and fortuitous. Of the 280 plays mentioned in Henslowe's diary, only 30 have survived in print, and perhaps one in manuscript.8 In the case of Shakespeare, the 1623 folio must have made the manuscripts of his plays seem redundant. His daughter, Susanna Hall, still had some `play-writings' by her father at the time Queen Henrietta Maria stayed at New Place during the Civil War, but there is no evidence that she appreciated their possible value (Schoenbaum, 1970, pp. 125±6; R. Wilson, 1993a, p. 193). Probably no one did until it was too late. Apart from the Fletcher examples I mentioned earlier, none of the apparently numerous copies to which Moseley refers seems to have survived either. But it will still be objected that in Shakespeare's day play-scripts simply did not have the cachet with readers that Moseley seems to reflect, so that there would not have been a demand for copies. This seems to me, to say the least, questionable. We know from Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia (1598) that Shakespeare circulated his `sugared sonnets among his private friends'. Why might he not have done the same with his plays, as the actors were to do later with those of Beaumont and Fletcher? One of the strongest arguments for at least taking this

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possibility seriously is the sheer length of so many of the surviving texts. I quote here from Philip Edwards on this point, though to draw very different conclusions: `Why is it that nearly all [Shakespeare's] tragedies were far too long to be performed in full on his stage? The average length of Elizabethan plays was under 2,500 words, allowing two to two-and-ahalf hours' playing time . . . Only three or four of Shakespeare's plays are within that limit' and five are over 3,500 lines each (pp. 21±2).9 But Edwards goes on to say: `I can see only one solution to this problem [of texts too long to be acted.] Everything that Shakespeare wrote, he wrote in terms of the stage . . . At the same time, those long, brilliant, unwieldy texts which have come down to us witness to an ideal theatre in Shakespeare's imagination. He wrote for himself perhaps' (p. 22). There is indeed `only one solution' if you start convinced that Shakespeare never wrote with a readership in mind. But Edwards' perplexities disappear if we entertain the possibility that Shakespeare's plays have survived in versions that reflect his expectation that they would be read as well as acted. We know from Moseley that this is what happened to the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, apparently with the consent of the authors. Edwards argues: `The only other dramatist who persistently wrote overlength plays was Ben Jonson. Jonson most certainly regarded his plays as literature to be read and pondered, and he carefully published the full texts as literary texts' (p. 21). Every Man Out of His Humour (1600) was published `As It Was First Composed by the Author B.J. / Containing more than hath been Publicly Spoken or Acted', something we may suspect of many if not all of his printed plays. It may be, however, that Edwards is too categorical in describing Jonson as `the only other dramatist' to write overlength plays. Jonson, it is true, was the author who made the most persistent point of seeing the fullest, most `readerly' versions of his plays into print. Yet Webster advertised the same of The Duchess of Malfi (1623), declaring it to be `The perfect and exact Copy, with diverse things Printed, that the length of the play would not beare in the Presentment'. And, again, we know that the writers of the Beaumont and Fletcher canon regularly wrote more than the actors could use ± and moreover that there was a demand from readers for that fuller version. (The surviving manuscript of Demetrius and Enanthe, for example, is clearly a copy of the authorial manuscript, being significantly longer than the version Moseley printed as The Humorous Lieutenant). How many other plays of the period may similarly have been written over-length, but only survive (like those of the Beaumont and Fletcher works for which Moseley could not recover the originals) in the cut-down acting versions?

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Jonson, Webster, and Beaumont and Fletcher all wrote over-length plays, either with the expectation of a print readership, or knowing that they would be circulated in manuscript. There is no reason in principle to suppose that Shakespeare should not have done the same, though ± for the reasons we have reviewed (and others I shall suggest later) ± print was not for him an option. Indeed, there is every reason to suppose that, like Jonson, he had a sense of them as `literary texts', albeit not the same sense that Jonson had, and not one that envisaged the same (print) readership but rather that of a more enclosed circle of manuscript circulation. Many features of Shakespeare's work (including `authorial revision') appear in a new light once such a possibility is entertained. But I shall confine myself to one broad and one specific observation. First, it would help to explain just how so many quartos based on `foul papers' (not playhouse versions) found their way into print, if there were multiple copies of his unadapted manuscripts, and those not under the control of the actors. Secondly, it would provide an intelligible explanation for the notorious conundrum of the two states of the 1609 quarto of Troilus and Cressida (third longest of all Shakespeare's plays). The first of these announces the play as `The Historie of Troylus and Cresseida. As it was acted by the Kings Majesties servants at the Globe. Written by William Shakespeare'. The second omits all mention of performance, describing it as `a new play, never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar', and, concludes with an apparent side-swipe at the King's Men as the jealous copyright holders. The text has been conjectured to be `printed from a private transcript of Shakespeare's own draft made by himself or a scribe', with little or no evidence of playhouse adaption.10 Explanations for these discrepancies range from publishers' hype to suggestions that the play had been performed only at some private venue, and in that sense was never demeaned by `the smoky breath of the multitude'. Special performances were not unknown, but plays written by a professional dramatist exclusively for private performance are. There is a more logical explanation, and Sam Schoenbaum grasps half the nettle: `The play could have been ``new'' only to readers . . . Had the publishers got hold of a transcript in private hands?' (1987, pp. 267±8). But he still rehearses the private performance theory to explain references to `the multitude'. Surely the point of the epistle is that it announces a reading version of the play, new to a print readership and superior to what had doubtless been performed in a cut text by the King's Men at the Globe. Indeed, the difference may well have been what got the publishers their licence.

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As early as 7 February 1603 the play had been entered in the Stationers' Register for `Master Robertes' (`The booke of Troilus and Cresseda as yt is acted by my Lord Chamberlens men' ± further proof of actual performance, almost certainly on the public stage) but `stayed' until `he hath gotten sufficient authority for it'. That authority would be a licence from one of the clerical licensers who, under the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of London, were responsible for clearing all books for publication; it should not have been granted without the permission of the owners of the work, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and on this occasion apparently it was not. In 1606 responsibility for the licensing of playtexts for print somehow passed to Sir George Buc, which is a matter of some interest in relation to the development of the Revels Office. Buc held the reversion to Edmund Tilney's post as Master of the Revels, though he did not succeed him until 1610; licensing plays for the press, however, had not hitherto been associated in any way with the Revels Office. Nevertheless, this change should not have affected the requirements for the granting of a licence. The 1609 entry in the Stationers' Register says nothing of Robertes, but grants a licence jointly to Richard Bonian and Henry Walley, on the authority of William Segar, who was deputising for Buc at the time.11 Nor does this entry say anything about the acting company, by then the King's Men. This is not unusual: the majority of such entries do not mention the acting company, though its consent can usually be understood to lie behind the granting of the licence for print. It is the second state of the 1609 title page which raises doubts here. Is it possible that Bonian and Whalley got a licence from Segar, where Robertes had failed to get one from the clerical licenser, specifically because they had convinced him that what they were printing was different in kind from the acting version? That it was expressly not `as yt is acted by my Lord Chamberlens men', and so did not require their consent? That such a distinction might be recognised and honoured has been given further credence by recent work by Alan Nelson on annotations by Sir George Buc in play-texts in his possession.12 The most intriguing of these, in the present context, is an inscription on the title-page of a 1600 quarto of Henry V, now in the Folger Shakespeare Library, which reads `much the same with that in Shakespeare'. We do not know when Buc wrote this, but it must have been before he went insane in 1622 ± and so before he could compare the quarto text with that in the Shakespeare First Folio which, as all editors of the play know, is a significantly different work. So Buc was comparing the quarto either with a performance of the play or with what he had somehow read. Of all people, the

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Master of the Revels was the one man who would get to read a play in manuscript, so this has no bearing on that side of my argument. But Buc's judgement here that the play as published was `much the same with' something else he knew indicates that he recognised texts clearly might exist in different states ± which could open up the possibility that different licenses might apply to those different versions. We cannot be sure if Buc made inscriptions in this way as part of his official duties as a licenser ± he was a deeply learned historian and scholar, for whom it was second nature to annotate and record his opinions. But if (as I suspect) this was done in the line of duty, his perception of two versions of Henry V might well parallel the situation Segar faced when he was asked to licence Troilus and Cressida ± not the version of the play `as yt is acted by my Lord Chamberlens men' but one `never staled with the stage, never clapperclawed with the palms of the vulgar'. And in all this we see foreshadowings of what Moseley describes in respect of the Beaumont and Fletcher texts, where the acting versions of plays were popularly known (and indeed often available in manuscript copies), but a particular cachet attached to what the authors had originally written: that was what Moseley wanted to make a sellingpoint of his edition, though the carelessness of the actors with the originals made his task difficult. Bonian and Walley first advertised their text as something it was not, an acting version, and then haughtily changed their tune in trumpeting a text unsullied by the common stage. I conclude my argument with four familiar comments by contemporaries which seem to me far more intelligible if Shakespeare were indeed circulating his plays in manuscript. Firstly, Gabriel Harvey's comments, written in a copy of Speght's Chaucer, in which he observes: `The younger sort takes much delight in Shakespeare's Venus, & Adonis: but his Lucrece, & his tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, have it in them, to please the wiser sort'.13 One perplexing feature of this is its dating; we do not know exactly when it was written but the wider passage in which it occurs refers to the Earl of Essex (executed in February 1601) as still alive, apparently making the play earlier than many people suppose. Equally perplexing, however, is that it seems to refer to Hamlet as a written text, on a par with Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, which were both in print by 1594. Hamlet was not printed until 1603, and then only in a text that would hardly `please the wiser sort'; the first respectable text was printed the following year. But by then Essex was long dead, and Lord Mountjoy (to whom Harvey also refers, and by that style) had been created Earl of Devonshire. We are forced to the conclusion that Harvey is not talking about a printed text: so he was either

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referring to performances (though that option is not really in keeping with the tenor of the passage) or to the play circulating in manuscript. The Arden editor of Hamlet, Harold Jenkins, provides an admirable survey of these perplexities but finally baulks at this last explanation: `The possibility of its manuscript circulation is one to view with scepticism: however appropriate it might seem for the author of the narrative poems, it is not what we think of as the way of a professional playwright and a sharer in a company jealous to protect its scripts' (Shakespeare, 1982, pp. 3±6). We are back to the red herring of the `company jealous to protect its scripts', with which I dealt earlier, and which is coupled with some very telling phrasing: `it is not what we think of as the way of a professional playwright'. It has been precisely my point throughout this essay to re-think what it might have meant to be a professional playwright in Shakespeare's position which (as I have stressed) was very different from that of the playwrights employed, say, by Henslowe. By far the least problematic explanation of Harvey's reference to Hamlet is that versions of the play were circulating in manuscript, among `the younger sort'.

iv) Gentle Will My remaining three comments, by Henry Chettle, by Heminge and Condell, and by Ben Jonson, all relate directly to Shakespeare's twin status as `a professional playwright' and as a gentleman, which much of the argument thus far has skirted but not confronted. The potential incompatibility of these two roles within the Elizabethan class system is graphically illustrated by the complaint lodged in 1602 by Ralph Brooke (or Brokesmouth), York Herald, against his superior in the College of Arms, Sir William Dethick, Garter King of Arms. Brooke drew up a list of 23 instances in which he claimed Dethick had abused his authority in granting coats of arms, betokening gentle status: fourth on his list was `Shakespear the Player' (Schoenbaum, 1987, pp. 229±32). As Schoenbaum laconically observes: `The appellation player is doubtless pejoratively intended' (p. 232). Elsewhere he relates numerous contemporary testimonies to Shakespeare's good nature (several of which use the term `gentle'), with the slightly whimsical observation `Shakespeare is enshrined in consciousness as Gentle Will Shakespeare. One cannot imagine a more fitting designation for the innate gentleman who was not gently born' (p. 255). This vacillates between Elizabethan and modern uses of `gentleman', and does not do justice to the importance Shakespeare himself and his

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contemporaries attached to the formal status. It was almost certainly a flourishing William Shakespeare who acquired the family coat of arms in 1596 on behalf of his then impoverished father. And the following year he acquired New Place, an eminently suitable property for a country gentleman, which is what he seems to have been intent on being when he severed his links with the theatre. The commentary of contemporaries on these ambitions is so intertwined with what we think of as the `factual record' that we must approach all of it with care. It has become something of a commonplace to observe that Shakespeare is remade by each new generation of actors, critics, and audiences in their own image. But it is usually assumed, as in Gary Taylor's Reinventing Shakespeare (1990) and Michael Dobson's The Making of the National Poet (1992), that this is a process which only got under way when he was comfortably part of the nation's literary history. On the contrary, it began before a word of his was in public print, and it centred on his class status. At the head of Chapter 4 `Marlowe: Censorship and Construction' I quoted from Henry Chettle's Kind-Heart's Dream (1592±93), in which he defends his own role in the printing of Robert Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance, with its bitter death-bed denunciation of fellow playwrights. Later I also sketched in something of the distinction Chettle apparently draws there between Shakespeare and Marlowe: this is, of course, a notorious minefield (Schoenbaum, 1987, pp. 154±7; Dutton, 1989, pp. 17±20). I want to draw further attention here only to the curiously oblique commendation of Shakespeare's writing, at the end of what he says about Shakespeare: `divers of worship have reported, his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art'. The passage as a whole, with its references to Shakespeare's civil demeanour, his `uprightness of dealing' and `honesty', is an attempt to convince `Gentlemen Readers' that Shakespeare was every inch a gentleman himself, presumably to repudiate Greene's slurs (`upstart crow', `absolute Johannes Factotum') on an actor/artisan with pretensions. What Chettle cannot vouch for personally he takes from the report of other gentleman (`divers of worship'), and this includes `his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art'. This is an oddly precise phrase, `facetious grace' apparently echoing Cicero's praise of Plautus in De Officiis (Schoenbaum, 1987, p. 155 and Note). But to what does it refer? What had the `divers of worship' actually seen to warrant this praise? There was certainly nothing then in print. Shakespeare's first published work, Venus and Adonis was entered in the Stationers' Register on 18 April 1593, some months after Kind-Heart's Dream. To be sure, it might already

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have been circulating in manuscript, as might some of the sonnets. But if the phrase really does echo Cicero on the dramatist, Plautus, it must relate to Shakespeare's plays ± and all the more so, since it was those that Greene had scorned. Chettle could have heard these in the theatre, as could anyone else. What Chettle implies, however, is that `divers of worship' have access to written texts, where `facetious grace' ± the mark of a polished, gentleman writer ± will be more apparent than in performance. The manuscripts of Shakespeare plays betray his gentry every bit as much as Viola's appearance betrays hers: `Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit / Do give thee fivefold blazon' (Twelfth Night, 1.5.292±3). Chettle's stray remarks in Kind-Heart's Dream did not themselves contribute to the later myth of an `artless' Shakespeare since its reference to him was not appreciated until the myth itself, of `Fancy's child / Warbl[ing] his native wood-notes wild' (Milton, `L'Allegro'), was already well entrenched. But we do see in it the seeds from which that myth derived, and one intriguing feature of the circumstances in which Chettle's words came to be printed is that they leave room to suppose that it was Shakespeare himself ± or, at least, the `divers of worship' who vouched for him ± who laid those seeds, insisting on his gentility (and all that implied about his writing) in the face of Greene's calumnies. Chettle's account is given substantial corroboration by those who ought to be the most authoritative of sources, the actors with whom Shakespeare worked and who certainly did contribute to the myth of his artlessness. In prefacing the 1623 folio, Heminge and Condell pay homage to a Shakespeare `Who, as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse, that wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers' (A3r) ± the `gentle . . . easinesse' of the gentleman writer, but an `easinesse' which they do not scruple to polish by imposing on the plays a five-act structure in imitation of classical precedents, though this was almost certainly alien to Shakespeare's writing practice (Howard-Hill, 1990). Yet they also declare themselves `so to have publish'd [the plays] as where (before) you were abus'd with diverse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors, that exposed them: even those, are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes . . . as he conceived them'. As a blanket dismissal of all the earlier quartos this is less than candid. It is entirely possible that all were indeed `stolne and surreptitious', but were they `maimed, and deformed' in the process? As we have observed, the latter may be true of the 1600 Henry V and the

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1603 Hamlet; it is certainly not true of the 1604 Hamlet and the 1609 Troilus and Cressida, which modern scholars regard as at least as good as the versions in the folio. Ironically, what tends to make them `superior' is precisely the quality that Heminge and Condell single out for praise, the `easiness' of expression that characteristically produced texts which, while intensely theatrical, were (if we follow Edwards) too long to use. Some folio texts ± Macbeth and The Tempest for example (significantly lacking quarto versions) ± seem to reproduce what might practicably have been staged, showing distinct signs of having been cut down from longer originals. W.W. Greg long ago observed of Macbeth that `there is clear evidence of cutting at some points in short abrupt lines accompanied by textual obscurities' (Greg, 1942, p. 147). In The Tempest ± in so many ways admirably edited ± a `ghost' (Antonio's son) and an undeveloped character (Adrian) also suggest cutting rather than carelessness. In short, Heminge and Condell praise a quality in Shakespeare's writing which their own texts tend rather to diminish than to enhance: it is better preserved in the `good' quartos. It may be true that the `foul papers' they received from him contained `scarce . . . a blot'. But they say nothing about the blots needed to reduce them to playing form. As with Beaumont and Fletcher, `When these Comedies and Tragedies were presented on the Stage, the Actours omitted some Scenes and Passages (with the Author's consent) as occasion led them'. In the case of Shakespeare it is usually assumed that there is no real distinction between `actors' and `author' in this way, because he was indeed an all-round man of the theatre. The issues I have raised here call that into question. We have no way of knowing what part Shakespeare had in preparing what he wrote for the stage. It may have been a considerable one, and there are no grounds finally for believing that anything in the 1623 folio was not in some sense sanctioned by him. But it also seems clear that the process was not as simple as Heminge and Condell imply, or as later ages have often taken on trust. There is substantial evidence of a Shakespeare who regularly wrote, with some facility, plays too long and complex to be staged in the theatre of his day, plays for which the only plausible audience was one of readers. The `good' quartos provide us with the clearest evidence of what those plays were like, and the sheer number of them suggests that manuscript copies were in circulation, making it possible for printers eventually to obtain them ± as, without question, they did the `sugared sonnets'. This is implicitly acknowledged in Ben Jonson's riposte to Heminge and Condell, in Discoveries: `I remember, the Players have often mentioned

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it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out line. My answer hath been, Would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech . . . [He] had an excellent fantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions: wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stopped . . . His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too' (lines 647±61). What grates with Jonson is the adoration of a Shakespeare who wrote like a gentleman amateur (`gentle expressions'), giving every impression that it was effortless (`flowed with . . . facility'), and, what was more, that he did not give what he wrote a second thought (`never blotted out line') ± as much because he did not care as because he got it right instinctively. This is a Shakespeare who affects a sprezzatura, a dismissive nonchalance like that of Sir Philip Sidney commending as he devalues the Arcadia to his sister with the kind of self-deprecation that traditionally constitutes boasting in the English upper classes (Sidney, p. 57). And it smacks much more of a man writing for `gentle readers' than of one crafting texts for the stage. It is an image of authorship that Jonson very much resisted, because it was so much at odds with his own, that of the self-made man of letters, proud of his `laborious' art and determined to make his mark in public print. For another notable aristocratic mark was a suspicion of print, at least where it might carry a connotation of artisan labour or writing for money (Saunders; May). Jonson does not, however, deny that Shakespeare wrote as Heminge and Condell implied; on the contrary, he confirms that they were only too right ± even if their edition of the plays is not the best reflection of the qualities they claim. Between them, Chettle, Harvey, Heminge and Condell, and Jonson all associate Shakespeare with this tradition ± all but Jonson doing so with awed respect. So there is every possibility that Gentle Will's apparent lack of involvement in the printing of his plays also derives from a sense of the associated social stigma (an embarrassment we repeatedly find in writers with social pretensions, like Samuel Daniel). Shakespeare seems openly to confront the `brand' attached to writing for the public stage (`public means which public manners breeds') in Sonnet 111, where he regrets that `almost thence my nature is subdu'd / To what it works in, like the dyer's hand'. Printing the product of such labour may well have compounded `gentle' Shakespeare's sense of the social inferiority attached to his profession. His lack of inhibition in printing Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, quasi-classical epyllia demonstrating `facetious grace' in writing but in no way associated with artisan

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labour, suggests that different social nuances were at work there: bids for Southampton's patronage were entirely divorced from his theatre trade. In the case of the plays, social pretensions (to a Belmont above the sordid trade of the rialto) and the pressures of corporate bonding (within the theatrical world which part of him despised) may mutually, and paradoxically, have reinforced one another. It is unusual, to say the least, to link together sprezzatura (generally associated with courtly lyrics, sonnets and romances) with writing for the public playhouse. But Shakespeare's career crossed many of the faultlines of writing in early modern culture, to which Michel Foucault refers when he writes that the `coming into being of the notion of the ``author'' constitutes the privileged moment of ``individualization'' in the history of ideas, knowledge, literature, philosophy, and the sciences' (Foucault, p. 101). Such a development was neither spontaneous, nor did it occur in a single, definitive form. The competition between the old world of courtly letters, largely wedded to manuscript culture, and the new world of commercial print, played itself out over several generations. It has always been apparent that Shakespeare straddled these divides. What I have argued here is that the two sides of his career were less clearly demarcated than is usually supposed, that in writing plays which were in some respects unplayable (albeit perfect raw material for his actor colleagues) he was effectively writing for a readership no different in essence from that of his sonnets and epyllia. Heminge and Condell knew this in commending his plays to a wider readership, `To the Great Variety of Readers', but they blurred the message ± perhaps, like Moseley, finding it difficult to recover some originals ± in favouring texts which spoke more of the playhouse than they did of unblotted lines. Thus they gave (new) birth to an author of mixed authority, to a hybrid poet-playwright, who speaks simultaneously the different languages of which he was composed.

v)

Consequences

This has important implications for our editing and reading practices. What I have argued calls into question the primacy increasingly often accorded performance as the only true, or at least most authentic, manifestation of the Shakespeare text. The most distinguished contribution to that school of thought is the Complete Oxford Shakespeare (1986), whose general editors were Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. The guiding principle thoughout that volume was to reproduce as nearly as possible the state of the plays as they were performed in Shakespeare's lifetime. To

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take only one example, this resulted in a preference for the folio A Midsummer Night's Dream as copy text, over the almost universal use of the 1600 quarto by earlier editors. As the general editors argued in the Textual Companion to the edition: `we have found no reason to doubt that the bulk of the Folio directions represent the play as originally and authoritatively staged. Those directions which clearly envisage a different staging from that implied in Q seem to us dramatic improvements for which Shakespeare was probably responsible' (Wells and Taylor, p. 280). Elsewhere, other recent editors have accorded significantly more (or, at least different) authority than was traditionally allowed to the so-called `bad' quartos, even where their printers patently did not have access to authoritative texts, on the grounds that they nevertheless embody actual stage practice, however crudely. These are entirely legitimate and defensible editorial practices, but we must not regard them as definitive ones. What Chettle, Heminge and Condell, and the evidence of the `good' quartos tell us is that Shakespeare had readers in mind too, however much practical theatrical applications must also have shaped his thoughts. The habit of reading Shakespeare as much as we play him is not a modern, or academic, perversity. But if Wells and Taylor have gone to one extreme of the spectrum of Shakespearean discourse, that located as comprehensively as possible in theatrical practice, it is only fair to observe that they did so at least partly in response to centuries of editorial practice that silently privileged the `writerly' end of the spectrum, the Shakespeare who `never blotted line'. It has been usual throughout the twentieth century to pay lip service to the idea of Shakespeare as `a man of the theatre' but at the same time to make editorial judgements on what were essentially aesthetic rather than theatrical grounds, measuring the options against an elusive ideal text, usually characterised by `fulness' and `facility'. Whether consciously or not, this has actually favoured the `writerly' Shakespeare, who remains the dominant voice in the English-speaking world's construction of its definitive author ± a voice essentially of pre-print culture, of closet or privileged readership, of (to a degree) social snobbery. That is not to say that the other, `theatrical' Shakespeare is in any real sense more modern, or democratic, or egalitarian. But he is different, and he speaks with a different voice, attuned to a different audience. And one of our duties as modern readers (or practitioners) of Shakespeare is to recognise the fact of multiple voices, and to discriminate between them as best we can.

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One final caveat: the myth of the artless genius, foreshadowed by Chettle, finally entered the public arena in Heminge and Condell's First Folio, alongside the plays that were its living proof, many never printed before, and never before collected in a form which so powerfully registered their range and sustained invention. That myth has coloured their reception ever since, partly because, as they foisted it on the world, it betrayed little (unlike Kind-Heart's Dream) of the social pressures which had made it such a necessary fiction during Shakespeare's own lifetime, given his conflicted status. The afterlife of this myth cannot be my concern here. But I wish to highlight one effect of its persistence on modern readings of the works. Just as the Baines deposition and the `great reckoning in a little room' have coloured modern readings of Marlowe, the presumption of a `gentle', artless Shakespeare contributed for many years to the idea that his writings were essentially apolitical. Or, to put it another way, that they mirrored so complacently the attitudes of Elizabethan England shared by all reasonable and educated men, that they were for practical purposes politically uncontentious, so centrist as to be invisible (see above, p. 69). Ironically, the contrary myth of a money-making `man of the theatre' often comes freighted with similar assumptions: the search for profits precludes heterodox or contentious views. When we review the early commentary on Shakespeare that constitutes the birth of the author it is all too apparent how groundless these mythic constructions are.

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6

`Ben Johnson, I think, had all the critical learning to himself; and till of late years England was as free from critics, as it is from wolves.' (Thomas Rymer, 1674)

The Epistle to Volpone (1607) was the earliest free-standing critical treatise by Jonson to see print. There are, to be sure, a number of critical pronouncements in earlier works by Jonson, such as Lorenzo Jr's encomium on poetry in Every Man In His Humour (printed 1601), the various Grexes in Every Man Out of His Humour (1600), and incidental commentary on those parts of The Magnificent Entertainment (1604) for which Jonson had been responsible. There are also relatively brief prefaces to the printed texts of Sejanus (1605) and the masque Hymenaei (1606). But all of these relate very specifically to the works in which they appear, even if the neoclassical and humanist vocabularies they deploy connect them readily enough with wider socio-aesthetic agendas. The Epistle to Volpone very conspicuously addresses a wider context than the play it introduces. It does glance at one feature of the play itself ± an ending which flouts `the strict rigour of comic law' ± but only in the context of a much broader apologia, touching on many features of contemporary theatre and its audiences. Jonson had in fact written an earlier self-contained critical discourse, an `Apologetical Dialogue' which he had intended to append to the quarto text of Poetaster (printed 1602). But that was suppressed by some unnamed authority after it `was only once spoken upon the stage' and was not printed until the 1616 Folio of Jonson's Works ± only one of several rebuffs he suffered in respect of this play, which seems to have incensed some influential people. Jonson may also by this time have written a treatise relating to his own translation of Horace's Ars Poetica to which, as we shall see, he refers in the course of 114

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the Epistle. But that was never printed at all, and the manuscript was lost in the fire that destroyed his library in 1623 (Dutton, 1996a, pp. 13±19). So the Epistle to Volpone was in many ways a landmark in Jonson's career, a distinctive statement of principles which (partly because it was invariably reprinted with one of his most enduring plays) rapidly acquired authoritative status. I have already written on the Epistle's place in Jonson's evolving relationship with the Master of the Revels, the censor of plays whose post Jonson almost acquired himself in his later years, and it will be necessary to rehearse some of that material here (Dutton, 1993, esp. pp. 64±7). But I want to go beyond that to explore the intense ambivalence of this supposedly `authoritative' document, and how this ambivalence has been overlooked ± one might even say deliberately ignored ± by later commentators. This is in good part a matter of exploring the very particular resonances the text carried when it was first printed in 1607, and seeing how it subsequently lost many of these ± a process to which Jonson himself gave impetus when he revised the text for its inclusion in the 1616 Works, an example of the self-fashioning success of Jonson's own publicity (Sanders, Introduction; McLuskie). The resonances to which I refer all relate to events in Jonson's career in the years immediately prior to Volpone's publication. As I shall argue, the precise formulation of the Epistle owes a good deal to what were in fact intensely traumatic experiences in those years, though he only touches on them briefly and obliquely. The most striking instance occurs in the Epistle's rousing conclusion, where he envisages how poetry, turning on her detractors: `shall out of just rage incite her servants . . . to spout ink in their faces, that shall eat, farther than their marrow, into their fames; and not Cinammus the barber, with his art, shall be able to take out the brands, but they shall live, and be read, till the wretches die, as things worst deserving of themselves in chief, and then of all mankind' (lines 138±46).1 Cinammus is celebrated in Martial (VI, lxiv, 24±6) for his skill in removing brands. This cannot but have reminded Jonson's original readers of his own branding. In 1598 he had killed his fellow actor, Gabriel Spencer, in a duel, and only escaped hanging by claiming benefit of clergy ± that is, by proving his ability to read from the Bible, an archaic exemption from due process of law which reflected the reverence of an earlier age for the literacy of holy orders. Jonson nevertheless forfeited all his possessions and had to submit to the `deep and public brand' of a Tyburn `T' at the base of his thumb ± an ineradicable sign that his life was forfeit to the state if he transgressed again. He had intended to air this matter in

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116 Licensing, Censorship and Authorship

I could stamp Their foreheads with those deep, and public brands, That the whole company of Barber-Surgeons Should not take off, with all their art, and plasters. And these my prints should last, still to be read In their pale fronts when what they write `gainst me Shall, like a figure drawn in water, fleet. (IV, p. 322) This is a striking inversion of Jonson's own subjection to authority. Following classical precedent, he turns a graphic image of the state's authority over himself into a metaphor for his own powers as a writer (however much the state may attempt to circumscribe them). We may suppose that the forfeiture and branding was even more charged for Jonson than it would otherwise have been, because it was `then took he his religion [Roman Catholicism] by trust of a priest who visited him in prison. Thereafter he was twelve years a papist' (Conversations, 249± 51), a dangerous change of allegiance at a time of intense CounterReformation pressures. The spirit of the poet resisted the authority of the state, even as the state literally imposed that authority upon his body. Nevertheless, between the `Apologetical Dialogue' (1601±2) and Volpone, the state again came close to imprinting its authority upon Jonson's person. During the imprisonment which both he and Chapman suffered as a consequence of the unlicensed performance of Eastward Ho, `the report was that they should then had their ears cut & noses' (Conversations, 276±7). The reference to judicial mutilation in the Epistle is thus doubly charged for Jonson himself and for those who know what he has gone through. In the `Apologetical Dialogue' he had reserved the threat of branding for those who had libelled his own writing. In the Epistle he claims more generally for poetry (a term he has consistently and exclusively identified with his own works) the right to inflict public mutilation upon all its detractors ± a right which the state had so recently threatened to exercise a second time upon his own person. In the prologue to Volpone (where, as he wryly remarks, `From no needful rule he swerveth', line 32) Jonson promises to forgo that right, exercising the prerogative of mercy which ± in the end ± had been extended to

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the suppressed `Apologetical Dialogue' to Poetaster, where his `Author' turns back charges that he has libelled people by claiming that he could himself, if he chose, repay those who have libelled him over his play:

Chapman and himself. The key issue is that of authority: the authority of the state and of the poet, and of the relationship between them. This public flourishing of his own branding in the Epistle ± for the first time, as far as the reading public was concerned ± emphasises the paradox of Jonson's position, the subject re-fashioned as authority. Part of the claim to authority which Jonson seeks to establish throughout this document depends upon establishing his own `innocence', a tall order given all the official wrath his works had incurred hitherto. One tactic he deploys to this end is a brief, parenthetical distinction between plays written solely by himself and those written in collaboration, implying that others have been less scrupulous than himself but that he has been tarred with the same brush ± `I speak of those that are entirely mine' (54±5). This specifically relates to the question of `allowance' by the licensers and so primarily alludes to Eastward Ho, where this was a critical issue. But for those with long memories ± and I shall shortly suggest that Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, was one of these ± it would also evoke Jonson's imprisonment over the scandalous The Isle of Dogs (1597), which he co-authored with Thomas Nashe. It might also evoke memories of Sejanus, for the Earl of Northampton had him `called before the Council for his Sejanus, and accused both of popery and treason by him' (Conversations, 326±7). The precise circumstances of these accusations are far from easy to establish, and we do not know if it was the play as staged (1603), which was co-authored, or the printed text (1605), which Jonson wrote alone, which elicited them (Dutton, 1991, pp. 10±15). But Jonson seems to allude again to Sejanus ± his most recent play in print ± in the Epistle when he wryly observes that `not my youngest infant but hath come into the world with all his teeth' (49±50), rebutting the charge of `sharpness'. In such ways he tries to encircle himself with `innocence', by distancing himself both from malicious accusations and unfortunate collaborations. But in the process he cannot help re-iterating the traumas to which he has been subjected. This is even more fundamentally true of the Eastward Ho affair than I have so far suggested, since while he was imprisoned over that he wrote a string of letters to people of influence. Passages from one of these, to the king's chief minister, the Earl of Salisbury, reappeared verbatim in the Epistle to Volpone. He composed the letter with the utmost care ± it exists both in an early draft and in the holograph Salisbury actually received ± partly, no doubt, because of its recipient's importance but also because Jonson had had dealings with Sir Robert Cecil (as he then was) as early as the Isle of Dogs affair. Cecil had handled the correspondence over that business for the Privy Council. It was probably politic of Jonson,

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therefore, to acknowledge it in the letter as a genuine `error' on his part ± but one from which he had learned his lesson, insisting on his `innocence', his compliance with authority, ever since: `I protest to your Honour, and call God to testimony (since my first error, which (yet) is punished in me more with my shame, than it was then with my bondage) I have so attempered my style, that I have given no cause to any good man of grief'.2 In the Epistle, as we have seen, he disingenuously glosses over any admission of guilt by dissociating himself from all works not `entirely mine'. He also makes no mention of any `error'. The first passage to be reproduced in the Epistle (like so much else in Jonson's criticism) is based on Martial, and specifically the preface to his Epigrams: `My noble Lord, they deal not charitably, who are too witty in another man's works, and utter, sometimes, their own malicious meanings, under our words' (p. 221). This reappears in the Epistle as: `there are that profess to have a key for the deciphering of everything: but let wise and noble persons take heed how they be too credulous, or give leave to these invading interpreters, to be over-familiar with their fames, who cunningly, and often, utter their own virulent malice, under other men's simplest meanings' (65±70). The second passage is this: let me be examined, both all my works past, and this present . . . whether, I have ever (in any thing I have written private, or public) given offence to a nation, to any public order or state, or any person of honour, or authority, but have equally laboured to keep their dignity, as mine own person safe. (p. 221) This reappears in the Epistle as: howsoever I cannot escape, from some, the imputation of sharpness . . . I would ask of these supercilious politics, what nation, society, or general order, or state I have provoked? what public person? whether I have not (in all these) preserved their dignity, as mine own person, safe? (47±54) In both contexts, this passage leads to a very particular pay-off. In the letter to Salisbury, Jonson immediately protests: `If others have transgressed, let not me be entitled to their follies'. This was not in the early draft of the letter, and is clearly a careful after-thought. Jonson is hinting at something made much more explicit in a letter sent by Chapman to

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the king over his and Jonson's joint predicament: `our chief offences are but two clauses, and both of them not our own' (ed. cit., p. 218). Two particular passages in Eastward Ho had apparently caused offence, rather than the play as a whole. The usual construction of Jonson's and Chapman's letters is that they were both implicitly blaming Marston (who apparently contrived to avoid imprisonment) for these `clauses', though it is equally possible that they meant they were interpolations by the actors. But, where Chapman effectively admits that an offence has been committed (though he and Jonson are not guilty of it), Jonson himself turns the issue towards his own rectitude. He does not enter into the question of other persons' guilt, but insists upon his own consistent innocence; he has not `transgressed' but respected `authority'. This, in more general terms, is the issue he also takes up at the parallel point in the Epistle to Volpone: `My works are read, allowed . . . look into them' (54±5). His own works submit themselves to the licensing required by authority, both for performance and for publication. Tongue-tied by authority in the publication of Poetaster, he could only beseech his reader there to `think charitably of what thou hast read' ± which the Earl of Northampton, who challenged Sejanus, and Sir James Murray, who denounced Eastward Ho, conspicuously had not done. Here in the Epistle Jonson recognises that `nothing can be so innocently writ, or carried, but may be made obnoxious to construction', though he continues to protest his `innocence' (62±4). But this acknowledgement of the process of `allowance' whereby the Master of the Revels licensed a play for performance and the Bishop of London's licensers gave it another for print points to a degree of control over what other readers could legitimately find in his writing. By acquiescing to a form of policing which he had previously found irksome, Jonson paradoxically acquires a power to determine (delimit) the meaning of what he writes (and so his integrity as an author) which he had never enjoyed before. But it is a telling fact that this public submission to the general authority of state censorship follows on ± literally and directly ± from a private submission to the most powerful man in the state, after the king, and from the state's renewed threat of physical mutilation. One further trauma, not directly linked to his writing, certainly also left its mark on the Epistle; that is the Gunpowder Plot and its aftermath. The first we know of Jonson, after his release (unharmed) from imprisonment over Eastward Ho, was that he attended a party in the Strand, on or about 9 October 1605. This was given by Robert Catesby, leader of the Gunpowder Plot conspiracy, whose `providential' discovery was less than a month away; several of the other conspirators were there too (Miles,

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p. 100; Riggs, p. 127). Immediately after that discovery (7 November) Jonson was summoned by the Privy Council to act as a go-between in their efforts to contact a certain Roman Catholic priest `that offered to do good service to the state'; they provided him with a warrant to demonstrate both his and their own honourable intentions. Despite Jonson's earnest endeavours, conducted initially via the chaplain of the Venetian ambassador, `the party will not be found', as he reported the next day to Salisbury personally, protesting: `May it please your Lordship to understand that there hath been no want in me either of labour or sincerity in the discharge of this business.' He regretted his inability to resolve matters `to the satisfaction of your Lordship and the state' (Miles, p. 102; Riggs, pp. 127±9). As a Catholic convert Jonson may have had ready access to Catesby and the other conspirators, as well as to the Catholic priesthood. The question is whether, knowing this, Salisbury only used Jonson in the aftermath of the affair ± or whether he had been using him throughout, as a double agent (Archer). His imprisonment, and threats of worse, over Eastward Ho would have made him all the more plausible a companion for his desperate coreligionists. Volpone was apparently staged in February or March 1606. If Jonson's claim that `five weeks fully penned it' (Prologue, line 16) is true, he must have written the play immediately in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot and at a time when some of those implicated in the plot (like the Jesuit, Father Henry Garnet) were paying the ghastly penalty. Jonson's personal tension could only have increased when, in the crack-down on known Catholics after the Plot, he was `presented' for `correction' that January in the Consistory Court of London. He was accused of failing to take communion in the Church of England, which was required by law and deliberate omission could be construed as treason. The charge sheet dryly noted Jonson to be `a poet', who was reported `by fame a seducer of youth to the Popish religion' ( Jonson, 1925±52, 1, pp. 220±2). The charges were first heard in April, and subsequent hearings dragged on through the early summer. Jonson acknowledged his failure to take communion, over religious scruples, but pointed out that he had regularly worshipped at his local Anglican church for the past six months ± in effect, since the Plot. He denied the rumour about his being a `seducer of youth' and challenged the court to present proper evidence, which it was apparently unable to do. Jonson was required to submit his scruples to the consideration of one of a number of notable Anglican clergy, including the Dean of St Paul's and the Archbishop of Canterbury; he was to choose one of these and attend twice a week for spiritual guidance, under

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which terms the charges were `stayed under seal' but not formally dismissed. This, then, is the context in which the Epistle to Volpone was composed: a whole sequence of traumas and confrontations with authority, dating back to the Isle of Dogs affair, including conviction and branding for killing Gabriel Spencer, conversion to Roman Catholicism, problems over the ending of Every Man Out of His Humour (where Jonson originally brought on a boy actor impersonating Queen Elizabeth), examination over Poetaster and the staying by authority of its `Apologetical Dialogue', examination by the Privy Council over Sejanus, imprisonment and threat of mutilation over Eastward Ho, implication in possible government manipulation of the Gunpowder Plot, and prosecution for recusancy in the aftermath of the Plot itself. These are all addressed, implicitly or directly, in the Epistle itself or the documents upon which it demonstrably draws, the `Apologetical Dialogue' and the letter to Salisbury. Once that is perceived, we are better placed to appreciate the strategy of the Epistle as a whole. The dedication of the play to those `most learned ARBITRESSES', the universities, can be seen ± like the invocation to classical authorities (notably, here, Strabo, Martial and Horace) ± as an appeal to timeless, apolitical values, placing art in a transcendent framework of disinterested scholarship, abstracted from the social and political conditions of its own composition. But this is belied by the manner and location of the Epistle itself. In the quarto text, the portentous capitals of the dedication stand over the laconic invitation: `There follows an Epistle, if you dare venture on the length' and the document itself is subscribed `From my house in the Blackfriars this 11 of February 1607', locating it very specifically in a world of writers and readers, time and place ( Jonson, 1925±52, 4, p. 16, footnote). Quite apart from anything else, it is a very fashionable address for someone who had been stripped of all his goods less than ten years before: a man much in demand to write royal masques and entertainments has done well for himself materially, whatever other difficulties he may have faced. The universities themselves, invoked as judges, were no more outside the structure of authority than those other courts ± civil, criminal and ecclesiastical ± which Jonson so regularly confronted, even if he more readily concurred with their judgement on Volpone. Indeed, their leading luminaries were key names in Jonson's history: the Chancellor of Cambridge was Salisbury; its High Steward was Lord Chamberlain Suffolk (whose missing licence was such a key element in the Eastward Ho affair though he also seems to have been the person responsible for effecting the release of Jonson and Chapman).3 The Chancellor of Oxford was

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Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, the Lord Treasurer, who in his youth had part-authored Gorboduc. He would be a very plausible candidate for the unnamed lord of the third in the sequence of Jonson's letters from prison over Eastward Ho, the more so in that Jonson is supposed to have declared: `I laid the plot of my Volpone, and wrote most of it, after a present of ten dozen of palm sack from my very good Lord Treasurer' ( Jonson, 1925±52, 1, p. 188). As we have seen, the composition of Volpone certainly followed hard on his release from prison, and such a gift would have befitted the occasion. Whatever we make of specific occasions and personalities, it remains inescapable that a dedication to the universities was inevitably also a dedication to the power-brokers in the Privy Council. The invocation of the `equal sisters' as `arbitresses' in literary matters should perhaps be put alongside the performance of the Court of Avocatori within Volpone itself as judges in civil and criminal ones. The burden of the Epistle is very much that of the `Apologetical Dialogue', to justify Jonson's claim that he properly fulfils `the offices, and function of a Poet' (21) in contradistinction to `the too-much licence of poetasters, in this time' (14). But Jonson lifts the argument into a different frame of reference by linking his definition of `a poet' with Strabo's `universal' dictum about `the impossibility of any man's being the good Poet, without first being a good man' (22±3: Strabo, Geographica, I.ii.5). At a time when Jonson was still formally under investigation for failing to conform to the state religion, and when the virtuous intentions of his last three plays had all been impugned in one context or another, the question of his `goodness' is a challenging one: by whom, and in what court, is this to be determined? Jonson immediately follows this with a broad encomium of `a poet', beginning: `He that is said to be able to inform young-men to all good disciplines' and latterly including among his accomplishments, `a teacher of things divine, no less than human' (28). This might be taken to parody the charge he had faced in the Consistory Court: `a poet, and by fame a seducer of youth to the Popish religion'. But if anyone had challenged Jonson for mocking authority here he could (as with the annotations in the quarto Sejanus) have cited the chapter and verse of the innocent derivation of the whole passage: Minturno's De Poeta (1559), p. 8. From such equivocal foundations, Jonson launches out against `this bold adventure for hell' (42), which is how he characterises much current `dramatic, or (as they term it) stage-poetry' (36±7) and from which he is determined to distinguish his own writing. Denying that he has ever engaged in `prophaneness' (an issue of particular topicality, since in

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1606 Parliament had passed an Act of Abuses to prevent blasphemy and profanity on public stages) or `bawdry' (45±6), it is here that he addresses `the imputation of sharpness', drawing on the classical precedents of Horace and Martial, as re-worked in the `Apologetical Dialogue' and the letter to Salisbury, to deny that he has ever been `particular' or `provoked any `nation' or `public person'. Those of his works `that are entirely mine' are `read, allowed', conforming to the requirements of authority. He insists that `it is not rumour can make men guilty, much less entitle me to other men's crimes' (60±2) ± picking up the theme of unwarranted `fame' or `rumour' that runs from the `Apologetical Dialogue', through the letters from prison, to the trial for recusancy, hammering home his point in attacking `these invading interpreters' (who, he warns `wise and noble persons' may also be `over-familiar with their fames': my emphasis) and a breed of satiric writers who `care not whose living faces they entrench, with their petulant styles' (67±8, 74±5) to gain notice and popularity: he declines `so preposterous a fame'. Jonson's implicit claim to be himself a good man and a true poet is thus advanced on two fronts: dissociation from three forms of contamination ± from the company of `poetasters', from misreadings (malicious and otherwise) and from guilt-by-association with what other writers have done ± and a protestation of `mine own innocence', the authority for which he cannot generate himself but must derive from being `allowed'. His private intentions are guaranteed by a very public subjectivity. Jonson then turns the terms of the argument away from intention and interpretation, towards dramatic form, sympathising with `those severe, and wiser patriots' (77±8) who would prefer a return to older, unsophisticated styles of drama (with fools and devils) rather than be subjected to the lampoons and state satires of the current stage. He ascribes to a `lust in liberty' the vogue for `misc'line interludes [variety entertainments]. . . where nothing but the filth of the time is utter'd, and that with such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, so racked metaphors' (86±91). It is to rebut such examples, and to restore poetry to its former dignity `that were wont to be the care of kings, and happiest monarchs' (as depicted in Poetaster), that Jonson claims he has laboured in Volpone `to reduce [bring back], not only the ancient forms, but manners of the scene, the easiness, the propriety, the innocence, and last the doctrine, which is the principal end of poesy, to inform men in the best reason of living' (99±109). All of this he reiterates in the Prologue to the play, where he promises `rhyme, not empty of reason' (4), and `no eggs are broken; / Nor quaking custards with fierce teeth affrighted' (20±1) in an example of `quick

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comedy, refined, / As best critics have designed' (29±30); he invokes Horace in the ambition `To mix profit with your pleasure' (8) and Aristotle in his claim `The laws of time, place, persons he observeth' (31) as he distances himself from the tasteless lawlessness of the `misc'line interludes' elsewhere on the contemporary stage. He acknowledges in the Epistle that his `catastrophe' may be criticised for being over-severe (with Mosca consigned to the galleys and Volpone to a lingering mortification in the hospital for incurables) but points out that it was deliberate policy not slip-shod work, that it was done to give the lie to those `that cry out, we never punish vice in our interludes' (116), and that he could find classical precedent for it anyway: `fitly, it being the office of a comic-Poet, to imitate justice, and instruct to life, as well as purity of language, or stir up gentle affections' (121±3). This might readily be construed as an ironic reading of the `catastrophe' of Volpone itself, where the `justice' meted out is hard to distinguish from the revenge of a self-seeking, hood-winked court. But the ironies of the legal discourse of both the Epistle and the play are compounded several times over if we recall that, only weeks before the latter was staged, the author had written to the king's chief minister (in a letter from which he was now borrowing passages), complaining of being `un-examined, or unheard, committed to a vile prison' (to Salisbury, p. 221) and contemplating worse penalties yet. Furthermore, around the time he wrote the play itself, he was subject to another court's investigation into his religious and political orthodoxy. To `imitate justice' and to `instruct to life' may not be co-terminous exercises for `a poet'. Jonson does not, however, enforce any of these contextual ironies as he consigns his copy to the printer from his house in the Blackfriars in February 1607, merely promising (in the quarto text): `To which, upon my next opportunity toward the examining and digesting of my notes, I shall speak more wealthily, and pay the world a debt' (notes to lines 123±4). This is presumably the long-promised `observations upon Horace', later described as `Apology for Bartholomew Fair ', whose failure to find print is one of the great enigmas of Jonson's career (Dutton, 1996, pp. 13±19). If it actually had more to say about the proper functions of the poet, the relationship between his intentions and his reception, or the proper balance between his own liberty and the authority of the state, it is one of the major losses of English literature. Jonson rounds the Epistle off with a final obeisance to the universities, a promise to `raise the despised head of poetry again', and a fierce final denunciation of those who `keep her in contempt', for the terms of which ± as we have seen ± he returns to the theme of branding first

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explored in the `Apologetical Dialogue'. James D. Redwine Jr has observed that: `The importance of the Volpone criticism . . . can scarcely be stressed too often ± it marks a turning point in the development of Jonson's critical theory. Up to the time he wrote Volpone, his attitude toward the so-called laws would seem to be one of respectful independence'. He cites a dialogue between Cordatus and Mitis in the Induction to Every Man Out of His Humour as evidence of Jonson's indulgent earlier view of the `licence' or `liberty' that may properly be exercised by modern poets. But `from Volpone onward . . . ``licence, or free power, to illustrate and heighten our invention'' is more likely to be attacked as a dangerous tendency of an illiterate age than to be defended on the grounds of classical precedent . . . Throughout [the Epistle to Volpone] it is the ``liberty'' or ``licence'' of contemporary poetry that he attacks most bitterly. And in the Volpone prologue, three of Mitis' ``too nice observations'' are brought forth as necessary elements (``needful rules'') of ``quick comedy'' ` (Redwine, p. xv). I suggest, however, that it is a mistake to treat the Volpone material in this way, as a defining watershed in Jonson's critical thinking, though I agree that it most forcefully represents one end of the spectrum of his thinking about the `licence' or `liberty' of poetry. For one thing, Redwine underplays the extent to which some of Jonson's most libertarian observations on the freedom of poets were written much later in his career; take, for example, the much-quoted passage in Discoveries (which was put together after the 1623 fire, even if passages from it may have been survivals from earlier): `For to all the observations of the ancients, we have our own experience: which, if we will use and apply, we have better means to pronounce. It is true they open'd the gates and made the way, that went before us; but as guides not commanders: non domini nostri, sed duces fuere. Truth lies open to all; it is no man's several' (Discoveries, lines 134±40). More importantly, Redwine completely ignores the very specific historical context within which the Volpone material was written, and which it has been my main concern to trace here. These circumstances placed enormous pressures on Jonson, and he responded to them very provocatively by running together the `rules' of poetry and the `laws' of the state. Once that is appreciated, we can see that his entire vocabulary ± of law and arbitration, innocence and branding, allowance and mulcting, liberty and licence ± is, if not positively ironic, ambivalent and double-edged. His own subjective `innocence' (for which we might substitute the term `honesty') is not defined by the laws of the state, any more than it is by the authority of the ancients, but these are useful markers when the alternative is to be misread, misconstrued,

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misreported in a world where reception is governed by the lowest common denominators of ignorance, spite and the suspiciousness of those with power. We may relate these ambivalences to what Martin Elsky observes about Jonson's inheritance from the humanist tradition, and its acknowledgement of the ultimate authority of the monarch: `his authority to comment on social matters stems from the King . . . Like Ascham and Elyot, Jonson points to the monarch as the guarantor of his word, though he does not go to the extreme of seeing his entire poetic as being constituted by the authority of the king' (pp. 87±8). The final reservation here tacitly marks a difference between Elsky's position (and my own) and that of Jonathan Goldberg in James I and the Politics of Literature, who argues with Foucauldian pessimism that Jonson's entire identity as an author is subsumed in the ideological authority of the King: intention is beside the point in a world where language writes us (rather than viceversa) and meaning is entirely defined by the power which sanctions that language ( J. Goldberg, esp. pp. 219±30). This is an elegant poststructuralist double-bind, but it is one which needs to be confronted with the equal and opposite deconstructionist proposition, deriving from the supposedly arbitrary processes of signification, and rendered with deliberate crudity by Stanley Fish when he propounds that `there are no determinate meanings and . . . the stability of the text is an illusion' (Fish, p. 312). It is not monarchs, writers or texts which generate or sanction meaning: but readers, in all their perplexing variety. In the Epistle to Volpone Jonson was, in effect mediating between the Scylla of Goldberg and the Charybdis of Fish, the tyranny of royal `allowance' or authority and the terror of endless misreading. If he settles, in this instance, more for the former than the latter, he does so in a context where the very fact of mediation preserves a separate authority for the writer, a distinct identity for the author, though (as we shall see) this can easily be overlooked. These are matters of some moment, because what Redwine views simply as a change in Jonson's critical priorities can be construed as symptomatic of a much more fundamental re-orientation of his career. Put at its crudest, it could be said that he was turning his back on the rebellious `liberty' which had been such a hall-mark of his early life and writing, and becoming a creature of the state. My own reading of the Epistle to Volpone, in the context of all the confrontations with authority from which it derives and to which it refers, has stressed the ironic transpositions involved, Jonson appropriating to himself the language of law and authority which had so repeatedly and until so recently been

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applied to his own person and writings: words that had helped gain his release after `transgressing' in his last work (Eastward Ho) here celebrate the `authoritative' reception of his new one. As such, it is potentially a very subversive document indeed: mocking those who would seek to restrain his art (as they had repeatedly restrained his body) just as much as he reviles those who denigrate or misconstrue it, while at the same time appearing to accept the terms and conditions they set for him to continue writing. Yet there is no doubt that Jonson's career actually took a more establishment turn from this point. His brushes with authority diminished in number and severity, and by the time he received a royal pension in 1616 he was in all but name Poet Laureate, regularly polishing the court's selfimage with his masques. What was this if not selling out? Jonson had concluded his letter to Salisbury with the hope that he `will be the most honoured cause of our liberty, where freeing us from one prison, you shall remove us to another, which is eternally to bind us and our Muses, to the thankful honouring of you and yours to posterity; as your own virtues have by many descents of ancestors ennobled you to time. Your Honor's most devoted in heart as words./ Ben. Jonson' (p. 222). Is this Jonson's offer, in the most literal of terms, to become Salisbury's poet, as perhaps he also had to agree to be his spy? If so, it truly freed Jonson from one prison to remove him to another, and may explain the bitterness with which ± when Salisbury was dead, and he was free to do so ± Jonson berated his muse for betraying him `to a worthless lord', in a context which makes it perfectly plain that it was Salisbury he had in mind (Dutton, 1996a, pp. 62±3). We do not know if Jonson felt it necessary to consult Salisbury before reproducing in public parts of the letter he had written him, but at the very least he could hardly have re-used that material without being conscious of his dependence on a whole structure of institutionalised power, with Salisbury at the centre of it. But in a sense Jonson's own view of what he was doing in the Epistle to Volpone, and how he felt about whatever trade-offs lie behind its earnest protestations, have long since ceased to matter. As that document articulates only too clearly, we lose control of the meaning of a text as soon as we release it to a readership. And that is exactly what happened to the Epistle, which became a chapter ± an important chapter, because of its priority and because of its association with such a powerful play ± in the larger document of Jonson's own career. As David Riggs observes, `Since his career coincides with the rise of the literary profession in England, his personal success story takes on the characteristics of a cultural phenomenon: in following his rise we are also witnessing the emergence of

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authorship as a full-time vocation' (p. 3). And for the Caroline sons of Ben, and the Restoration grandsons, that cultural phenomenon was overwhelmingly one of royalism and critical conservatism. The tensions and conflicts of the first decade of his career ± still so apparent in a historical reading of the Epistle ± disappear in the massive authority of the 1616 and 1640 folios. The ambivalences of the Epistle ceased to resonate and it was, so to speak, only the `establishment' side of the equation ± the law-abiding author/citizen ± which later generations acknowledged, as the modern concepts both of responsible authorship and of literary criticism emerged alongside it. Jonson himself doubtless furthered the process in the text's subsequent manifestations: the self-deprecatory reference to the Epistle's length, and its dating and placement from the Blackfriars in 1607, disappeared from the 1616 folio version, immediately casting it as a more `authoritative', out-of-time document. And, because of the respect the Works enjoyed, this is the version best known to posterity (taking precedence, for example, in the great Herford and Simpson edition, for example, and in most modern editions of Volpone). The promise, referring to `the office of a comic-Poet' that `upon my next opportunity toward the examining and digesting of my notes, I shall speak more wealthily, and pay the world a debt' is toned down to a bland `To which, I shall take the occasion elsewhere to speak'. As we have observed, Jonson never did so speak in public. The `observations on Horace his Art of Poesy' apparently burned in the fire, and with them the last chance that Jonson might have had to speak more conclusively or radically about his own authority as a writer; in this respect, it is a loss as tantalising as that of Aristotle's treatise on comedy, which absorbed Umberto Eco so entertainingly in The Name of the Rose. In its absence, Jonson has branded himself to posterity as a keeper of the laws, an `allowed' poet, more thoroughly than the authorities could ever have done: `and not Cinnamus the barber, with his art, shall be able to take out the brands'. Jonson's Restoration successors did not trouble to scrutinise the brands, because it entirely suited their purposes to take them at face value. As Richard C. Newton observes, `Of this Ben Jonson . . . the first English classic author, virtually all subsequent English authors claim some degree of paternity' (p. 46). Dryden claimed more of that paternity than most, though it was a claim shot through with Oedipal tensions.4 When it suited him, Jonson was a model to follow, an authority to invoke, as he was for many writers in the Restoration. As Jennifer Brady has recently shown, many Restoration literary quarrels in effect revolved around competing appropriations of Jonson; behind Dryden's

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MacFlecknoe, for example, Richard Flecknoe, Thomas Shadwell and Dryden himself all laid claim to be heirs of Jonson, and the issue becomes one of establishing primacy or greatest authenticity. She quotes Dryden's dedication to The Assignation: `I am made a Detractor from my Predecessors, whom I confess to have been my Masters in the art . . . I will be no more mistaken for my good meaning: I know I honour Ben Johnson more than my little critiques, because without vanity I may own, I understand him better' (Brady, p. 350). She points to the key term `understand', which is so central to Jonson's critical vocabulary, as Dryden's demonstration of his fitness to be heir; she might also have pointed to the theme of being `mistaken for my good meaning', which is such an important issue in the Epistle to Volpone. What mattered most for Restoration writers was that Jonson was inescapably there, a native English base line on which they could build, a position with which they could negotiate, an `authority'. Edward Howard knew Jonson was so familiar (both visually and by reputation) that he wrote for his play, The Women's Conquest (1671) `The Second Prologue personated like Ben Johnson rising from below': Did I instruct you (well near half an age) To understand the grandeur of the stage, With the exactest rules of comedy . . .5 It suited them that this authority should be solid and unambivalent. And, in constituting him as such, what Dryden and the others could not see, or chose to ignore, were the tensions and internal contradictions which ran through that achievement, making its outcome less than assured. (It is striking how often, for example, they ignored the unique spelling of the name, his bid for distinctive self-construction not seen before the 1604 Magnificent Entertainment which met King James's ceremonial entry into London). Jonson's own example only belatedly resolved (or could be construed by his successors as resolving) the problematics of authorship with which he himself always had to wrestle. By 1674 Thomas Rymer could facetiously write about him as a lone wolf of a critic, in the words that stand as an epigraph to this piece. In his usual insensitive way he seems to have given no thought to what it might be like to be a lone wolf in such a context. Jeremy Collier, too, seems to treat Jonson (as he does most Elizabethan / Jacobean dramatists) with a degree of condescension in his A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698): `Ben Johnson shall speak for himself afterwards in the character of a Critic'.6 To be fair, we must

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acknowledge that Jonson wished some of this on himself. The two monumental folios that confronted the world as his legacy after 1640 inevitably engendered resentment as well as respect. And his career after the 1616 folio was almost calculated to inspire filial loyalty and Oedipal resentment in equal measure; his eminence translated him (how willingly or deliberately is not clear) into the Father of a `tribe' or `sons' of Ben, who congregated in the Apollo Room of the Devil tavern, admonished by Jonson's own Leges Convivales, rules for tavern conduct. That father-figure role inspired not only `sealed members' of the tribe but a younger generation as a whole to think in terms of `our acknowledged master, learned Jonson' ( James Shirley, dedication of The Grateful Servant, 1629), his longevity doubtless enhancing the effect. And there are moments when Jonson actively connives in his own myth, as in his commendatory poem to Brome's The Northern Lass, where he stressed `observation of those comic laws / Which I, your master, first did teach the age' (Uncollected Verse 38, lines 7±8). As William Winstanley observed in 1687, `he may be truly said to be the first reformer of the English stage, as he himself more truly than modestly writes in his commendatory verses of his servant's Richard Broom's comedy of the Northern Lass' (Bradley and Adams, p. 412). This is only one instance of what is a sadly common phenomenon, Jonson's own words being refracted into a posthumous ± and not always very attractive ± reputation. This may have been a price he was bound to pay for latterly acquiring what, despite his own pretence to the contrary, he never securely held in his own lifetime: the status of a classic author. Succeeding generations could not ignore that status, but appropriated or belittled it, as suited their own situations. In the process they elided into a single magisterial (and essentially safe) figure the complex, combative and shifting personalities which had built up the first lone wolf of English criticism ± an elision that continued to define our view of Jonson well into the twentieth century, lying behind (for example) James Redwine's comments on the Volpone criticism, quoted earlier. Ironically, then, history allowed Jonson to complete a journey that he never quite managed in his lifetime. As early as 1601 Thomas Dekker shrewdly suggested in Satiromastix that what the raw and rebellious Jonson was after was the authority of a licenser: `the reversion of the Master of the King's Revels' (4.1.189±90). In the Epistle to Volpone we have seen him complexly posed between defiance of such authority and submission to it. Bartholomew Fair (1614) sees him exploring, in the richest depth, the ambivalent relationship between licentiousness and licence, the market-place and its regulators, culminating in this

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Jonson: Epistle to Volpone 131

Leatherhead Sir, I present nothing but what is licensed by authority.

Busy Thou art all license, even licentiousness itself, Shimei!

Leatherhead I have the Master of the Revels' hands for't, sir.

Busy The Master of the Rebels' hand, thou hast; Satan's!

(5.5.12±15) On 5 October 1621 Jonson was actually granted a reversion to the post of Master of the Revels. He never got to occupy the office because the man who held the prior reversion, Sir John Astley, outlived him. Yet the authority Jonson wielded as a critic after his own death was in many ways more potent than that of any court licenser. It has been my purpose here to rediscover in the Epistle to Volpone something less monolithic, less self-assured, less safe ± elements that Jonson himself was the first to try to disguise. In so doing I have redemonstrated the central truth that Jonson attempted to confront and contain there: that once a text finds readers they alone possess its meaning.

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exchange between puppet-master Leatherhead and his `censor', Zeal-ofthe-Land Busy, with its splendid punning on Revels/Rebels:

Middleton: the Censorships of A Game at Chess

I will preface this chapter with something I wrote in the introduction to my recent edition of A Game at Chess: `because the play is unique in so many ways, it is difficult to determine what terms of judgment to apply to any of its features. Was it the play that was unusual, or the manner or timing of its performance, or the way it was published in manuscript, or the political context within which it was written and received, or a mixture of these? We actually know so much about it (by contrast with virtually every other play of the period) that we finally have nothing with which we can properly compare it. And all judgements are ultimately a reading of the ideology of early modern theatre history as a whole, rather than of this single play' (Dutton 1999, p. xxxiii). This applies to the censorship of the play (or lack of it) as much as to any other feature. Annabel Patterson dubbed A Game at Chess one of `those famous puzzling incidents of noncensorship' in the early modern world (1984, p. 17). That is, she assumes it ventured on contentious issues and depicted notable individuals in ways not normally acceptable in Jacobean England: yet somehow it was performed. Albert Tricomi similarly assumes that the controversy which surrounded the play after its performance points to a work that was genuinely and distinctively subversive: `Why did this play so threaten the Jacobean authorities?' (1989, p. 144). These comments encapsulate what remain perhaps the commonest views of the play and its censorship. But neither is (as we shall see) beyond dispute. This is an oft-told tale, and I shall only recite it as far as I have to, in order to contextualise some new observations I shall develop later. I particularly want to focus: 1) on the practice of Sir Henry Herbert as Master of the Revels here, compared with his practice in respect of other plays; 132

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2) on the role of the Spanish Ambassador in protesting about the play; 3) on suggestions that the play might have been sponsored by someone in real authority ± Prince Charles, the Duke of Buckingham, or the Earl of Pembroke ± in such a way as to circumvent conventional censorship; 4) conversely, on suggestions that, within a generalised spirit of patriotism the play contrives to be critical of Charles and Buckingham, and perhaps even of the King himself; and 5) on tangible evidence of censorship in the surviving manuscripts of the play, but a censorship apparently driven by concerns over taste and decency rather than the politics of the piece, which is the usual focus of concern. In respect of the first three of these, I want to signal early that I think we need to be much clearer than commentators have commonly been in distinguishing between what a censor ought or ought not to have found objectionable in the script and what the investigation after the event actually found objectionable.

The role of the Master of the Revels In rushing to the conclusion that A Game at Chess was unusually freespoken (and so perhaps specially sponsored), modern critics often overlook the fact that Jacobean commentators on the play also felt it went beyond the bounds of what was acceptable and might well have been specially protected. If so, Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, would have to have been involved, since it was precisely his function to prevent scandals of the kind the play had become. John Holles, eye-witness to one of the unprecedented nine consecutive performances (interrupted only by a Sunday, when playing was forbidden), observed `me thinks this is a hardy part, & b[o]eyond my understanding: & surely thes gamsters must have a good retrayt'. `Hardy part', I think, means `foolhardy affair' and he certainly believed that the actors needed protection, `a good retrayt', if they were to avoid the consequences of their actions.1 Another commentator, George Lowe, reported that `it is thought that it will be called in and the parties punished', while at least two others recognised that the performances were anomalous and that it was only a matter of time before they were stopped. John Woolley observed that `the Players looseth no tyme, nor forbeareth to make haye while the Sunne shyneth', while Sir Francis Nethersole noted that `they play no thing els, knowing there time cannot be long'.2

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Woolley later reported that `Middleton the Poet' was likely to be imprisoned for writing the play `if he doe not cleere him selfe by the Master. of the Revells, who alowed of it; and it is thought not without leave, from the higher powers I meane the P. and D. if not from the K. for they were all loth to have it forbidden, and by report laught hartely at it . . . '.3 Woolley was on the fringes of the court and writing to the diplomat William Trumbull, then in Brussells, so his reports are not without interest. Unfortunately, however, there is no evidence that he had access to really privileged information, so that his suggestion that the Master of the Revels only licensed the play `not without leave, from the higher powers' whom he coyly designates as `the P'[rince], `D'[uke of Buckingham] or `K'[ing] really has no higher value than that of speculation or gossip. For what it is worth, however, he has difficulty believing that Herbert would have licensed it without specific authorisation from the highest level. When the play was actually performed at the Globe, the King and the Court (including Herbert) were on progress in the Midlands, two days' ride away ± another circumstance which has fuelled conspiracy theories. Those members of the Privy Council who were still in London, and asked to investigate the scandal, clearly also wondered what Herbert had been up to. They had themselves been reprimanded in the first letter Secretary of State Conway wrote on the matter, voicing the King's complaint `that the first notice thereof should bee brought to him, by a forrain Ambassador, while soe manie Ministers if his owne are thereaboutes and cannot but have heard of it'.4 Their reply reads like an attempt to redirect the King's ire on Herbert: `Wee have called before us some of the principall Actors, and demaunded of them by what lycence and authoritie they have presumed to act the same, in answer whereunto they produced a booke being an orriginall and perfect Coppie thereof (as they affirmed) seene and allowed by Sir Henry Herbert knight, Master of the Revells, under his owne hand, and subscribed in the last page of the said booke'. And they returned this copy with their letter, suggesting that someone should `call Sir Henry Herbert before you to know a reason of his lycenceing thereof, who (as we are given to understand) is now attending at Court'.5 We have separate confirmation that Herbert did indeed licence the play in the normal way, since Edmund Malone saw his office-book before it disappeared some time in the ninteenth century, and marked his Third Quarto copy of the play ` ``A new play called A Game of Chesse, written by Middleton,'' was licensed by Sir Henry Herbert, 12 June 1624. So his Office Book MS' (Herbert, p. 152). But none of this tells us whether

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Herbert acted with or without special `leave, from the higher powers'. If he was indeed examined, as the Privy Council suggested, no record remains of the outcome. Twentieth century commentators, however, have not been deterred by the lack of evidence. Even at times in ignorance of the Jacobean opinion (the significance of the Holles letter, for example, has only been appreciated in the last decade), they have not been slow to suppose that `higher powers' were involved in the staging of the play. Louis B. Wright argued in 1928 that `the ruling favourite, Buckingham, and the Heir Apparent, Charles sponsored or, at least, actively approved' the play. (Wright, p. 112; Wilson, J.D., 1930). This conclusion was more recently endorsed by Jerzy Limon, who sees A Game at Chess as part of a `consciously contrived campaign' to influence opinion about the conduct of English foreign policy: `Because the play reveals striking congruity with the new ideology of ``the war party'' headed by the Duke of Buckingham and Prince Charles, it is therefore . . . plausible that these two sponsored the production' (p. 98). This argument ignores the doubts that have been raised about the depiction of Buckingham and Charles within the play, which I shall discuss later. In her analysis of the play as a piece of `oppositional drama', voicing a concerted, Puritan-centred opposition to the policies of the Stuart government (and so to Buckingham and Charles), Margot Heinemann suggested that William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, was a more likely sponsor: as Lord Chamberlain, Henry Herbert's immediate superior, indeed his kinsman and patron, Pembroke was better placed than anyone to support a play critical of the highest powers in the land (Heinemann, 1980, pp. 166±9).6 He had been a long-standing opponent both of Buckingham's influence and of his (hitherto) pro-Spanish policies. But by the time of the play negotiations for a Spanish marriage for Charles had fallen through in a disastrous trip to Madrid undertaken by Charles and Buckingham (the subject of most of the final act of the play). Buckingham had openly declared in the House of Lords for war with Spain, and there had been a rapprochement between him and Pembroke.7 T.H. Howard-Hill pointed this out, and much else besides, in a very sceptical review of all attempts to find evidence of `higher powers' behind the play or indeed truly topical and contentious politics within it (1991a). Howard-Hill's opinion on any aspect of A Game at Chess is not to be dismissed lightly, since he has been closely engaged in its study for more than a decade, producing in that time (to mention only the main items) a Revels edition of the play, editions of its Trinity and BridgewaterHuntington manuscripts, a book and a number of related essays (1990b, 1990a, 1991b, 1993, 1995). It is not easy here to summarise his

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arguments even on the narrowly specific question of the play's `sponsorship', but since his scholarship discriminates consistently between supposition (of which the play has attracted a good deal) and documented fact, his conclusions demand attention. Of course, we must still be beware of confusing documented facts with the unvarnished truth: all evidence is subject to construction and to ideological appropriation. Howard-Hill suggests that the play as Middleton originally conceived it, reflected in the early-state Archdall-Folger manuscript, was `predominantly moral', its tone `prevalently satiric and ironic', its primary focus the attempted seduction of the White Queen's Pawn by two Black Pawns (1995, pp. 8, 69). But this original conception was significantly altered by the addition of later material, notably the introduction of the Fat Bishop and the changed depiction of the White King's Pawn: `The addition of the Black Knight's plot against the Fat Bishop ± which had nothing to do with the politics of 1623±24 ± dissipated the thrust of Middleton's moral design, and other revisions, notably the alterations to the White King's Pawn, emphasized the political dimensions of the play, so moving it further towards theatricality (in scenes V.i and iii), comedy and topicality. There is no reason to doubt that this significant wrenching of the play from the playwright's fundamental conception was inspired by the theatrical company after Middleton had shown them his early script' (p. 70). These moves towards `theatricality . . . comedy and topicality' were reinforced by the `extraordinary lengths' (p. 128) the King's Men went to in order to impersonate the former Spanish Ambassador, Gondomar, and the undeniable identification of the Fat Bishop with De Dominis, the Archbishop of Spalato (a Catholic prelate who had ostentatiously converted to Anglicanism, then equally ostentatiously returned to Rome). All of this is imagined as a dialogue of sorts between the author and the acting company, with no intervention from their censor or his superiors. At the same time, while the revisions of the play may have moved it towards topicality of a kind, it was not political or contentious topicality: `In the first place, A Game does not deal with any current political issue' (p. 105, my emphasis) ± it may deal with the recent history of AngloSpanish relations, and of Jesuit activity in England, but none of this is contentious in a context where the King, his ministers and Parliament were now at one in their opposition to Spain. `Second, those White House characters that might be identified with English authorities are depicted with the utmost respect and, perhaps, a prudent brevity . . . Third . . . the villains represented men who had no popular constituency in England in 1624' (pp. 106±7). Rather, Middleton `propagated attitudes to Spain

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fervently maintained by most politically aware Englishmen in the middle of 1624. The play cannot be considered to be propaganda because it did not seek to alter its audiences' attitudes to the matters of which it treated' (p. 108). On the contrary, he celebrated what were essentially communal values at the time: `This accounts for its popularity, its toleration by the authorities, and its initial approval by the censor. In short, the mystery of Herbert's licence is no mystery at all' (ibid ). Timing, in a sense, was all. As John Woolley commented in the earliest recorded response to the play's performance, `had so much ben donne the last yeare, they had everyman ben hanged for it' (Chess, p. 193). While the King, Charles and Buckingham had remained in favour of the Spanish match, A Game at Chess was unthinkable. By mid-1624 there was no one with influence at Court who had cause to be offended by it. So where for Limon the play is associated with the ascendancy of Prince Charles and his favourite, Buckingham, and for Heinemann it is ideologically consonant with the oppositional politics of the Earl of Pembroke and his associates, for Howard-Hill it is (in factional terms) politically neutral, a celebration of the national mood. Although I have reservations about aspects of Howard-Hill's analysis (to which I shall return), his conclusions on its licensing substantiate my own earlier published view of the matter, in which I argued that `While we cannot rule out a conspiracy behind A Game at Chess, there is no evidence for it, and it remains an unnecessary conjecture' ± unnecessary in that, as a typical beneficiary of the patronage processes of the Jacobean court, the Master of the Revels was essentially a consensual figure. He tried to ensure that nothing was presented on stage which was provocatively offensive to persons of substance or to friendly foreign powers (Dutton, 1991, pp. 247±8). In the context Howard-Hill outlines there is no real reason to suppose that Sir Henry Herbert would have had any qualms about granting a licence to the play. It is, I think, probable that the lengths to which the actors went to impersonate Gondomar ± apparently acquiring his litter, chair of ease (with a hole cut in the seat, so that it would not aggravate his anal fistula) and a cast suit of clothes ± may have breached levels of fictional veiling and so fuelled a level of popular success Herbert did not anticipate. Later in his career he insisted that Queen Henrietta Maria's Men alter their production of Shirley's The Ball, which he had already licensed, because `there were divers personated so naturally, both of lords and others of the court, that I took it ill' (Herbert, p. 177; see Chapter 3, pp. 45±6). One wonders whether Herbert had recognised the satire of those `lords and others', implicit in the play as he licensed

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it, but had not thought it part of his function to remove it until it was made explicit by the `personation'. If so, there may well have been parallels with A Game at Chess. In the case of a Massinger play, Believe As You List, he clearly did recognise the target and refused a license because it was not sufficiently disguised: `I did refuse to allow of a play of Messinger's, because itt did contain dangerous matter, as the deposing of Sebastian king of Portugal by Philip the <Second,> and ther being a peace sworen twixte the kings of England and Spayne' (Herbert, pp. 171±2). Nevertheless, when the play came back to him, transposed to classical antiquity but in other respects essentially the same, he granted it a licence (see Chapter 1, pp. 6±7). That is, Herbert's practice seems to have been to sift out what was provocatively offensive to persons of influence, but not to attempt to police the intentions of dramatists and their players or to pry too closely into adequately coded and distanced works, whatever an audience might infer from them. To that extent Herbert's treatment of A Game at Chess is not, on the face of it, any different from his treatment of other plays. We cannot know whether he did in fact seek `leave, from the higher powers' before he granted the licence, but there is little evidence in his office-book to suggest that he did such a thing at all often. Indeed, his comments on Massinger's The King and the Subject (which I discuss below) and the revival of Fletcher's The Woman's Prize (which I discuss at length in Chapter 3) are the only passages from which it may be inferred that he took it upon himself to refer plays to `higher powers': in the former case King Charles himself, in the latter Queen Henrietta Maria or those close to her (vide the involvement of the Earl of Holland). On this evidence it seems that he would have been careful to record the involvement of those `higher powers' in the licensing process, but Malone's record of the licence he saw does not suggest that he did so. On the other hand, the issue with those two plays would seem to be their potential to offend the king and queen themselves, which might explain why he was so careful to consult them and to record the fact. The primary offensiveness of A Game at Chess was clearly to persons outside the English court, and it might have been undiplomatic to leave a record of special permission to licence that.

The Spanish Ambassador's protest In the case of A Game at Chess there was perhaps only one man in England who would take violent exception to it ± the man who actually

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did so, Don Carlos de Coloma, successor to Gondomar as resident Spanish Ambassador between April 1622 and September 1624. It might seem self-evident that a Spanish Ambassador would object to a play that was such an uninhibited attack on Spain, its kings and his ministers. His predecessors in the time of Elizabeth had regularly done so, in the years before diplomatic relations were severed entirely (Dutton, 1991, pp. 22± 4). And other ambassadors would do the same, as the French one had done over Chapman's Byron plays (Margeson, 1988, pp. 9±12; Dutton, 1991, pp. 183±7). But ± and I think this is a point no commentator has picked up ± Coloma had very particular reasons for responding as he did. These are spelled out in, or may be inferred from, the letter which he wrote about the play to the Conde-Duque Olivares, chief minister to Philip IV of Spain; it was written the day after he forwarded his protest about the play to King James, who (as we have observed) was on progress in the Midlands throughout the period of its performance. The letter has been well known since E.M. Wilson and O. Turner first published an English translation in 1949, but it has mainly been treated as the fullest account of the play in performance (until John Holles's account became better known) and accorded virtual eye-witness status, though it is clear that Coloma did not actually see it in person (Wilson and Turner). Yet more than half of Coloma's letter is less about the play than a justification of his own response to it, which has to be seen in the context of his very presence in England at that moment. As his description of the play and its reception concludes, he switches immediately to his own situation: `Had I followed the advice of the MarqueÂs de la Hinjosa when he advised me to go away with him, such things would not have reached my ears, not should I have seen the sacred name of my King outraged in so many ways by such low, vile people, nor his holy and glorious acts so unworthily interpreted; only this was lacking to let me describe my sufferings here as a true Hell. The greatest of these, materially, is to listen to the blasphemies uttered against God; I have been unable, too, to discover during the last two months whether I did right or wrong to stay on here; the question whether I served the King well or ill by so doing keeps me in that uneasiness that your Excellency will well understand in this true servant of his' (Chess, p. 195). The MarqueÂs de la Hinjosa had joined Coloma as ambassador extraordinary, after plans for Prince Charles to marry the Spanish Infanta had virtually collapsed, and the Prince and the Duke of Buckingham had (with the reluctant acquiescence of the King), adopted an anti-Spanish stance. His brief was to work against this new direction in English foreign policy. In February 1624 the two of them had complained to James about

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a bill in Parliament for the more effective repression of Catholic recusants; in April they conspired to discredit Buckingham, hoping to break his hold over the king and so reverse the anti-Spanish policy ± James was sufficiently disturbed that he felt obliged to consult the Privy Council (3 May) on the truth of their charges. However in June Philip IV formally broke off the marriage negotiations with James, all but ending the possibility of a rapprochement between the two countries. Shortly thereafter Hinjosa was obliged to leave England at short notice, ignominiously in a merchant ship and without taking formal leave of the king (26 June).8 He apparently advised Coloma to leave with him, but the latter declined and remained in London for the next two months, totally isolated amid growing anti-Spanish feeling, and not even sure that he was doing what his masters in Madrid wanted him to do. Hence the tone of his letter, which at times is positively paranoid. He had been appointed at a time when Anglo-Spanish relations were extremely cordial and seemed likely to be cemented by a royal marriage; two years later the situation had collapsed into a diplomatic nightmare. And just as Buckingham and his allies sought to scapegoat the British negotiators in Madrid (notably John Digby, Earl of Bristol) in the wake of the volte-face in Anglo-Spanish relations, Coloma could not be sure that people in Spain might not find it convenient to denounce his efforts in London. The fact is that Coloma saw himself as a soldier rather than a diplomat: `one who, from the time of his birth, took upon himself the obligations of a soldier, and . . . as I may be trusted in my quality as a soldier, I shall know how, with God's help, to make good those faults into which I have fallen as an ambassador' (Chess, p. 197). This is perhaps why Hinjosa was sent to reinforce his embassy and why the subtle friar known as Padre Maestro [Fray Diego de Lafuente] was dispatched from Madrid to conduct some private negotiations with James. Coloma had an exaggerated sense both of his duty to Philip IV and of his own honour: he quarrelled with Hinjosa, over a sensitivity about what the presence of the other man meant for his own exalted standing as the representative of the King of Spain (`his ambassador, who for that reason is owed so much outward respect and particular esteem': Chess, p. 197; Lockyer, p. 172). Their joint attack on Buckingham had included the charge ± sensational, though perhaps not entirely without foundation (Akrigg, p. 386) ± that he had conspired to send James into forced retirement and replace him on the throne with Prince Charles. Faced with such accusations, Buckingham in turn `commissioned Sir Robert Cotton to investigate precedents of proceedings against ambassadors, who had broken the

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rules of diplomatic protocol' (Ruigh, pp. 285, 289). Late in April 1624, Cotton had begun to circulate his `Relation of the Proceedings against Ambassadors Who have Miscarried Themselves', which advised the Prince and the Duke to refer the matter to Parliament, beginning a process which could lead to a declaration of war with Spain if the ambassadors were found guilty of undiplomatic activity and the King of Spain did not punish them and offer redress.9 Cotton's recommendations were not actually followed, because James had no intention of allowing Parliament to set the agenda of matters within the royal prerogative. But Buckingham did pursue a private vendetta against the Spanish Ambassadors, which was partly responsible for the ignominious treatment of Hinjosa. And this did not end with Hinjosa's departure. From mid-July Sir Walter Aston, the British Ambassador in Madrid, informed Spanish ministers of the charges against Hinjosa and Coloma, and on 29 August he presented a formal memorial of them to Philip IV himself. This made it plain that James did not blame his royal counterpart for the actions of his diplomats, but that he `would and could by the Law of Nations, and the right of his own Royall Justice, proceed against them with such severity as their offence deserved . . . but . . . he would leave the reparation hereof to the justice of their King, of whom he would demand and require it'. In fact, nothing came of all this. Two months later (20 October) Aston reported to Buckingham: `The Conde of Olivares with a strong and violent hand hath delivered the Marquis [i.e. Hinjosa] from an exemplary punishment which would certainly have been inflicted upon him had he been left unto the Council of State, and without care either of the King's master's honor or engagements has saved the Marquis and left the envy of it upon his Majesty if the King our master will so please to understand it' (Ruigh, p. 302). That is, Buckingham's Spanish counterpart had protected his diplomat from the supposed wrath of his royal master, in such a way that King James might still (if he chose) regard the original offence as unpunished ± though Philip IV could not himself be held reponsible for any of this. It is a typical early modern diplomatic square-dance, which I suggest has interesting parallels with what happened in the wake of A Game at Chess. Among the rules of the dance it is important to remember that kings are never personally responsible for acts of discourtesy to their royal counterparts; that royal favourites may be held to blame but not normally to a pitch which calls into question their very status; that anyone else (including ambassadors) can be held personally responsible for anything, so that how they are treated by their masters becomes a

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public gauge of gaining and losing face, in any particular dispute; and that those who report these matters to their superiors always do so in such a way as to throw their own part in the proceedings in the most favourable light. All of this was in play when A Game at Chess became an issue.10 Coloma knew that Buckingham was pushing for revenge, but could have no confidence that Olivares (or anyone else) would actually save him if diplomatic necessities required a scapegoat. Furthermore he could have had little confidence that Hinjosa, back in Madrid, was not seeking to protect himself by deflecting all the blame back on him (i.e. Coloma). All of which, I suggest, further explains the paranoid tones of his 10 August letter to Olivares. The play itself, and its popular reception, could only have underlined to Coloma just how vulnerable he then was in London. But at the same time it offered him an opportunity to strike back ± to accuse James of unbecoming and undiplomatic behaviour in allowing his players to stage this insult to His Most Catholic Majesty. This was hardly on a par with the ambassadors accusing Buckingham of plotting to overthrow James himself, but it was still a matter of public face and Coloma evidently determined to milk it for all it was worth, not least with a view to how it would look in Madrid. Naturally (under the rules of the square-dance) he did not accuse James of personal responsibility, but these were his players, licensed under his authority, and Coloma demanded not only an end to public performance of the play but also that the authors and actors should `be punished in a public and exemplary fashion' (just what James was demanding in respect of Hinjosa and Coloma himself). Tellingly, he prefaces the whole complaint with the information that he expects to be recalled home at any moment (`I expect at any moment the command of my master the King to go give his Majesty an account of my embassy'), yet offers James an alternative to punishing the players: `or let Your Majesty order that I be given a ship to sail to Flanders with the appropriate safe passage which you give to the ambassadors of other Kings' ± that is, to break off diplomatic relations, only one step short of declaring war. Coloma was trying to turn the play into the last straw in a seriously deteriorating situation, a twist on the situation which would allow him to withdraw with a shred of dignity. As he subseqently put it to Olivares: `I have given the King of England this choice between punishing this roguery and sending me my papers, because every good reason and conjecture require that he should choose the first alternative, and it seemed to me that if he chose the second, he would find his actions condemned, not only by God, but also by the world' (Chess, pp.196±7).

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The whole affair might well have ended there if diplomatic relations had indeed been ruptured at that point, and Coloma had been either expelled or recalled. But James was not yet prepared for an open breach with Spain; so, as Robert Ruigh briefly observes, he was `careful . . . to avoid offense' (p. 386). Nor apparently had Philip IV given up all hope of peace. And so the rules of the square-dance continued to apply, and James's ministers (not unlike the Council of State in Madrid) went through the motions of looking for culprits ± carefully assuring Coloma `that justice will be done in this matter with proper publicity' and that `complete satisfaction and content will be given in everything' (Chess, p. 201). Coloma equally carefully forwarded a translation of Secretary Conway's letter, shrewdly observing `It remains to be seen whether the punishment that will be given to the actors and author of the play willl prove that the [King's] indignation against them is genuine' (Chess, p. 202). In stating it thus I realise that I am implying what Coloma suspected: that the whole `investigation' into A Game at Chess was a sham, a show of taking things seriously for form's sake, to preserve diplomatic face. And indeed it is not impossible that this was the long and the short of the affair ± a reading of events which would square very nicely with the presumption that the king /prince/duke had somehow sponsored the play in the first place, and with John Woolley's (uncorroborated) suggestion that `they were all loth to have it forbidden, and by report laught hartely at it' (Chess, p. 203). But the very formulaic nature of the proceedings may obscure as much as it reveals. When I wrote about these matters in Mastering the Revels I ascribed the rebuking of his Privy Councillors in London to James's `fury' that `the first notice thereof should bee brought to him, by a forraine Ambassador, while soe manie Ministers of his owne are thereaboutes and cannot but have heard of it' (p. 242). Perhaps I should have said `show of fury', because there is no way of measuring the sincerity of any of this. There are, however, a number of reasons for supposing that it might be genuine. Although James had acceded to the new belligerently antiSpanish policies of his son and his favourite he never did so with any enthusiasm. So, unless he was personally party to the staging of the play, he might well have been irritated that it had placed him in a diplomatic embarrassment ± at precisely the moment he was trying to take the high moral ground over Coloma and Philip IV. At a number of levels it would have brought home to the old man how much he was losing real control of his kingdom: he had seven months to live, and his bloated body could not walk unaided.

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But most tellingly of all, the rebukes are prefaced by an unmistakably personal reminiscence: `His Majestie remembers well there was a commaundment and restraint given against the representinge of anie moderne Christian kings in those Stage-playes' (Chess, p. 200).11 We do not know, in fact, how James discovered that the actors `take the boldnes, and presumption in a rude, and dishonorable fashion to represent on the Stage the persons of his Majestie, the Kinge of Spaine, the Conde de Gondomar, the Bishop of Spalato &c.'. Coloma's letter of complaint (unlike the subsequent dispatch to Olivares) gives no details of the play itself, beyond characterising it as `scandalous, impious, barbarous, and . . . offensive to my royal master' (Chess, p. 193). We may suppose that the messenger who delivered the complaint (in fact, Coloma's English-language secretary) gave more details verbally, but there is no way of knowing how accurate his information might have been. James (like Elizabeth before him) was only typical of his time in regarding an affront to a fellow monarch as an affront to himself: it was an issue which might well have moved him personally, especially if he believed (as the wording of the letter suggests) that both he and Philip IV had been `personated' as disrespectfully as Gondomar and De Dominis. If that were so ± whatever else the play contained ± he had (through the insubordination of his actors) ceded face and moral high ground to the Spanish at precisely the moment that he was demanding redress for their ambassadors' undiplomatic behaviour. In such circumstances, while the response to Coloma may well have been formulaic, it is not unreasonable to suppose that there was an element of genuine irritation in the king's rebuke to his Councillors and demand `for the exemplarie, and severe punishment of the present offendors' (Chess, p. 200). In Howard-Hill's careful analysis, `so far as can be determined at this distance of time, none of the other chessmen [i.e. other than Gondomar and De Dominis] was so strongly individualized', and he plays down the possibility that the scandal of the play derived from any life-like impersonation of King James, Prince Charles or Buckingham, however unmistakable their counterparts within the drama must have been (1995, pp.113±14, 180). But this rather glosses over Coloma's clear contention to Olivares that `the king of the blacks has easily been taken for our lord the King, because of his youth, dress, and other details' (Chess, p. 194). Moreover, in the context I am outlining, even the `personation' of Gondomar, who had been the King of Spain's representative, and was still his minister, was a potentially serious issue ± Coloma's assertion that a royal ambassador `is owed so much outward respect and particular

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esteem' is not entirely self-aggrandisement. The Privy Council's response to Conway's letter (21 August 1624) in fact ignores this side of the issue altogether, just as it ignores the charge of diliatoriness levelled at themselves. They report their examination of the actors (Middleton had been expected but did not turn up), focusing almost entirely on questions of due process: had the play been properly licensed by the Master of the Revels? had they changed or added anything since the licence? But they did not, apparently, press the issue of `personation'. Their implicit agenda, as we have seen, was to redirect any blame on to the Master of the Revels. The actors were only punished to the extent of being prevented from performing and in being required to put up a bond of £300 against any breach of this order. Conway's prompt reply (27 August) homed in on the Privy Council's omission, insisting that the king's `pleasure is, that your LLordships examine by whose direction, and application the personnating of Gondemar, and others was done. And that being found out, that partie, or parties to bee severely punished' (Chess, p. 206). Even the Earl of Pembroke's letter of the same day, which effectively signalled the last rites of the scandal in conveying the king's permission for his players to start performing again (though not A Game at Chess) pursues the same theme. He reminds the Council (via its President) that the King had involved them in the enquiry into the play `out of the tender regard hee has of that Kings honnour [i.e. Philip IV's], and those his Ministers who weare Conceived to bee wounded thereby' and concludes his account of the king's terms under which the actors are to be allowed to perform again with the provision `Yet notwithstanding that my Llordships proceed in their disquisicion to fynd out the originall roote of this offence, whether it sprang from the Poet, Players, or both, and to Certefy his Majesty accordingly' (Chess, pp. 206±7). Pembroke is unobligingly vague about the nature of `this offence', which is clearly more specific than the scandalous nature of the play as a whole. But taken in parallel with Conway's letter it is surely the issue of the impersonation, and specifically the impersonation of royalty and its representatives, which continued to rankle even as the general furore was dying down. The determination to apportion blame remains undiminished.12 At which point the official documentary record goes all but blank. John Woolley (28 August) continues his gossip, but admits himself that he has no corroboration: `Some say (how true it is I know not) that the Players are gone to the Courte to act the game at Chesse before the Kinge which doth much truble the spanish Ambassador' (Chess, p. 207). One can imagine that it would indeed `truble' Coloma, if it were true,

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though it seems most unlikely ± a kind of street fantasy of what might go on in royal palaces. But Coloma's paranoid vigil was almost over ± his letter of recall to Madrid arrived a few days later, and he left the country in September. On 30 August the Privy Council Register records that Middleton's son, Edward, was required to appear before the Lords, and did so, but there is no record of what he said (Chess, pp. 207±8). The fact that the official enquiry into A Game at Chess dries up just when Coloma leaves might reinforce the suspicion that it was all for show, a matter of saving diplomatic face, dropped when the need for that pretence disappeared. Yet the questioning of Edward Middleton points to an on-going investigation, which perhaps did result in the imprisonment of his father, however briefly, as the one deemed to be the instigator of the impersonations. The example of Shirley's The Ball again suggests a parallel (see p. 46). Herbert pursued that matter with Christopher Beeston, manager of the Queen's Men, who `promiste . . . that he would not suffer it to be done by the poett any more, who deserves to be punisht; and the first that offends in this kind, of poets or players, shall be sure of publique punishment' (Herbert, p. 177). In the negotiations between the actors' representative and the Master of the Revels, `the poett' emerges as a convenient scapegoat `who deserves to be punisht' ± though it is inconceivable that the actors did not know what they were doing. Herbert's self-righteous promise of public punishment to anyone (`of poets or players') caught doing this again is perhaps an embarrassed glossing of this transparent manoeuvre. Alternatively, the unspoken issue here may be the practice of some dramatists taking on the role of what in the modern theatre would be called the director. All dramatists read their work through to the actors on delivery of the script (Bentley, 1971, 76±9). But some apparently took it further, rehearsing the actors in how the text was to be played (Gurr, 1970, pp. 137±9). We know that Jonson sometimes took this role: did Shirley do it for The Ball, and Middleton for A Game at Chess, and carry rehearsal as far as impersonations? The various versions of verses said to have been addressed by Middleton to the king to effect his release may indeed testify to his having been imprisoned ± whether as a convenient scapegoat or as the director (Chess, pp. 211±12). But in either case the root issue seems likely to have been that of the impersonation of royalty and its representatives, rather than the offensive nature of the play in general. Such impersonation was an affront in itself to royal dignity (all royal dignity) and also (as with The Ball) to the authority of the Master of the Revels, in betraying the trust which was implicit in the granting of the licence. So if Middleton was indeed

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imprisoned, it need not have been a sham for form's sake: someone, even perhaps King James himself, may have been determined that an example be made. But it is most likely to have been for this feature of the staging rather than for the general purport of the play. The diplomatic context of A Game at Chess probably accounts for a number of the special features surrounding its scandal. A significant element of the responsibilities of the Master of the Revels was to ensure that no offence was given in the public theatres to those ± including foreign ambassadors ± with standing at court. When Philip Henslowe paid Chettle and Dekker to write King Sebastian in 1601 Edmond Tilney would have had no qualms in licensing a play on such a subject, given that England had virtually no diplomatic relations with Spain at the time. When Massinger tried to write on the same subject in 1631 Herbert stopped him, because diplomatic relations with Spain were good, and only allowed Believe As You List under a discreetly remote historical veil (see pp. 6±7). A Game at Chess fell curiously between these two stools. Diplomatic relations with Spain were appalling, but not non-existent. So Herbert managed to allow something that actually caused offence, possibly miscalculating over whether Coloma would (given his circumstances) actually complain or whether, if he did, anyone would take it seriously. In the event, the king chose to take it sufficiently seriously that a formal process of enquiry was pursued, and that may well have led to `exemplary punishment'. The evidence is not there to say that this did happen, but it would have been a perfectly logical consequence of Coloma's original protest and the terms in which it was couched. It would have been, in fact, what was supposed to happen if someone of sufficient standing chose to complain about a play ± as, for example, Sir James Murray complained about Eastward Ho! (Dutton, 1991, p. 172). What made this different was mainly that it required correspondence at Privy Council level and so left far more of a documentary record than is usually the case.

Buckingham and sponsorship That documentary record, as we have been clarifying, relates exclusively to the offence to Spain, and specifically how that offence was exacerbated by on-stage impersonation. Modern scholars, however, have not been slow to suppose that Middleton's targets in A Game at Chess did not only include Gondomar and the Jesuits, but implicitly those in authority in England who had allowed Spanish and Roman Catholic interests to flourish so strongly, prior to the reverses they had received in the year

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leading up to the play. When the Black Knight /Gondomar boasts of how he got a White House/ English fleet to deal with the Turkish pirates who threatened Spanish interests in the Mediterranean; or how he had made `the jails fly open', in apparent reference to James's agreement to release 74 Catholic priests in 1618 (3.1.85±91, and notes), it is difficult to overlook the inference that King James and his advisors had shown poor judgement in allowing him so much influence. In the former instance, since Buckingham as Lord Admiral was responsible for the `gallant fleet', it is clear enough where implicit blame might be said to lie. When the Black Knight chortles how `The court has held the city by the horns / Whilst I have milked her' (3.1.108±9) no individuals are implicated, yet there is no mistaking where responsibility lies. By the same token, whoever is shadowed by the treacherous White King's Pawn (a matter I discuss below) it is difficult to avoid the reflection that a more vigilant master would have recognised the treachery sooner. There is some evidence that Middleton himself was conscious of this implication, and tried to answer it in having the White King berate his Pawn: And dost thou fall from the top-bough by the rottenness Of thy alone corruption, like a fruit. (3.1.269±70) `Thy alone corruption' could mean `your unique corruption' (i.e. no one else was corrupt) or `your corruption alone' (i.e. there were no other grounds for your fall); either construction of the phrase amounts to an implied defence of both the court and the king ± the Pawn is to be seen as a unique rotten apple in an otherwise blameless court. And it is earlier made clear that he had qualities which made it right for James to favour him, but that corruption was his undoing. In such ways Middleton defends James from a charge he never quite levels. The White King we actually see in the play is a model of rectitude and regal authority ± but his improvidence (though never remarked upon) is actually responsible for the crisis in the play from which the nation needs to be saved. The case of Buckingham (and, to a lesser extent, of Prince Charles) is more complicated. The play depicts their quixotic trip to Madrid ± actually undertaken to pursue the deeply unpopular Spanish marriage negotiations ± as a subterfuge to `discover' Spanish double-dealing, and to this extent casts them in a heroic light. Here again, Middleton signals his own sensitivity to the issue by having the White Knight exhort his

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Duke: `Let us prevent their rank insinuation / With truth of cause and courage (4.4.2±3). That is, he resolves to anticipate and so thwart the foul rumours the Spanish themselves will spread about the marriage negotiations: which is entirely ironic, given that it was genuine English sentiment rather than Spanish `insinuation' which made the Madrid trip so unpopular. Furthermore, as Margot Heinemann points out, in the course of the trip they are obliged `to feign a little' (4.4.17), and thus Middleton contrives to make the White Duke (Buckingham) `accuse himself of faults well known to be his in reality ± gluttony, fatness and lechery' (p. 164). She has in mind such passages as this: White Duke Or I, beshrew my heart, for I fear fatness, The fog of fatness, as I fear a dragon; The comeliness I wish for, that's as glorious. (5.3.58±60) As a young man Buckingham was notably tall, long-limbed and athletic, but he was fond of food and inclined to put on weight; he was, nevertheless, vain about his looks (`comeliness') and the need to make a splendid (`glorious') appearance. The banquets he served became legendary for their self indulgence, another issue glanced at in the play, as the Black Knight castigates the `White House gormandisers' (5.3.49, and note). The ostensible joke of the scene is at the expense of the Spanish, whose hospitality for Charles' and Buckingham's entourage was reported to be meagre. But the more the Black King decries `riot' and `surfeit' (5.3.2/3), and his Knight waxes poetic about epicurean practices which his House does not indulge in (while the supposedly virtuous White House does), the more apparent is the joke's double-edge. In such ways, to pick up Heinemann's argument, the play may contrive to be `oppositional' and to satirise Buckingham, even as it celebrates the Puritan anti-Spanish policies which he had latterly espoused. Howard-Hill, however, refuses to accept that there is anything satirical here: the self-accusations are all a dissemblance undertaken by `characters [who] have invited the highest respect heretofore'; he thinks it is unlikely that `the audience would be able to shift between a serious and a satirical understanding readily' and insists overall: `None of the king, prince, duke, and archbishop could have read the play without gratification at the manner in which they were depicted. Certainly there is nothing offensive in their treatment in the play' (1995, p. 107 and

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note 46). Heinemann's case would clearly be stronger if she could have found evidence that contemporaries responded to the White Duke in the way she suggests; if they did, none of them was indiscreet enough to leave it on record. Yet her suggestion is stronger than Howard-Hill allows. The issue is not so much the White Duke's `treatment' in the play as the broader interpretive contexts within which his selfaccusations are advanced ± contexts about which, as I have shown, Middleton himself was clearly sensitive. That sensitivity is further shown in the care with which he has built degrees of ambiguity into what may seem to be transparent identifications. At one level, for example, the White Queen has to `be' Queen Anne, James's consort. Yet she died in 1618, and so had no literal place in the events of 1623 explicitly shadowed in the play. Nor would the lust which the youthful Black King declares for her (3.1.244) make any sense. Lust is the besetting vice of the Black House and is always at least partly a metaphor for their rapacious religious zeal. So the Black King's lust for the White Queen must relate to another entity, perhaps the Church of England (to which the White King could be said to be `married'), a reading which chimes well with 4.4., where the White Bishop saves the White Queen from the machinations of the Fat Bishop. At the same time, however, it was well known that Queen Anne had been a practising Roman Catholic for some years before her death, and in that context the desire of the Black House to `take' the White Queen could make ready sense at a more personal level ± as long as we do not hold the play to a consistent time-scale. The ambiguities built into the `identity' of the White King's Pawn can be traced even more tangibly in the textual evidence. From the earliest conception of the play, as shown in the Archdall manuscript, the Pawn is characterised as a Roman Catholic convert, whose treachery looks for advancement in the Roman church. The Black Knight promises: `There's an infallible staff and a red hat / Reserved for you' (2.2.220±21) ± the emblems of a cardinal. This would be appropriate for someone like Sir Tobie Matthew, who had advocated the restoration of the Catholic bishoprics in England and had furthered the marriage negotiations in Spain. On the other hand, on the Pawn's first appearance the Black Knight calls out `Curanda pecunia' (1.1.308) ± `Watch out for your money'. This scarcely seems relevant to Matthew, but might apply to Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex. As Lord Treasurer he had opposed war with Spain on grounds of cost, had incurred Buckingham's displeasure when the Duke's own policy changed in that direction, and paid the price, being convicted of corruption by Parliament in May 1624. But

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Middleton: Censorships of A Game at Chess 151

White King Has my goodness,

Clemency, love, and favour gracious raised thee

From a condition next to popular labour, Took thee from all the dubitable hazards Of fortune, her most unsecure adventures, And grafted thee into a branch of honour. (3.1.263±8: italicised lines not in Archdall) The inserted passage glances at his unique rise from city apprentice to rich merchant trader and speculator, to Earl and Lord Treasurer. Other late insertions, such as his promise `To cross . . . with my counsel, purse and power' (1.1.319) anything unhelpful to the Black House, reflect on his opposition to war with Spain (construed as treachery) and the `discovery' of the White King's Pawn would thus equate to Cranfield's disgrace. But as Middleton developed the character he removed none of the earlier suggestions. The final White King's Pawn is thus an amalgam of treacheries rather than a specific individual ± highly suggestive, yet irredeemably ambiguous in his suggestiveness. And it is striking that John Holles, the one man who actually saw the character on stage and committed his thoughts to paper, thought he represented neither Matthew nor Cranfield but the Earl of Bristol. Bristol was Buckingham's chief scapegoat for the failed Spanish marriage negotiations but neither a Catholic nor someone who had risen to the aristocracy from artisan labour (Chess, p. 199). Holles was his friend, sensitive to the disgrace that hung over him and appalled to find him pilloried on stage before a formal trial (`is hard, players should judge him in jest, before the State in ernest,' ibid). But the fact that he could identify the White King's Pawn with him (though he clearly noted the reference to `popular labour' which he quotes virtually verbatim) suggests how indeterminate the play's allegory was, at least in some of its features. It is this contextual ambiguity ± this pointing in multiple directions simultaneously ± which calls into question Howard-Hill's contention that it would be difficult for an audience `to shift between a serious and a satirical understanding' of the White House characters, and particularly of the White Duke/Buckingham. The more Middleton himself offers to preclude certain readings, the more it is apparent that they are actually available. This is especially true in respect of the last of the White Duke's self-confessed vices, lechery:

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Cranfield had no leanings towards Catholicism or the Jesuits. Yet later versions of the play point more strongly towards him:

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(5.3.121±5) Once he was securely in power, Buckingham became notorious for his (heterosexual) sexual appetite and quite indiscreet in his courtship; his advances to the wives of Spanish grandees in Madrid were widely reported and helped sour the marriage negotiations. Lust, as I observed, is the besetting vice of the Black House, a metaphor for their political and religious ambitions in pursuit of `universal monarchy' (1.1.51), which is why the seduction of the White Queen's Pawn is so central to the plot. So it is all the more intriguing to find the White Duke identifying himself with this vice. The intrigue deepens when we observe that these recurrent motifs of heterosexual lust are paralleled by one of sodomy. This is most apparent in 3.2., a clown scene involving none of the principal characters, the omission of which by Ralph Crane from his Lansdowne transcript of the play I discuss later. For the moment I will observe that it takes its tone from the Black Jesting Pawn's fantasy of homoerotic sexual domination, in which whiteness equates with passivity; much of its `business' involves three (male) Pawns contesting who can and will `firk' the others; and it concludes: `We draw together now for all the world / Like three flies with one straw through their buttocks' (3.2.38±39). The Black Jesting Pawn is presumably the character identified by John Holles as a Spanish eunuch (Chess, p. 199); if he was literally meant to be a eunuch, the joke about his sexual fantasies is that they are beyond his literal fulfilment. Perhaps, however, `eunuch' is a euphemism for pathic or catamite which, whatever else, he certainly is. The play constantly reverts to anal functions in its allusions to Gondomar's fistula (doubtless made much of by the actor playing the Black Knight), but here the focus is on homoerotic subordination rather than scatology, an alternative metaphor for power relations. And this is the function of the scene in the play as a whole: in the Counter-Reformation struggle between Catholic and Protestant, what is at stake is who `firks' whom, a classic instance of political and sexual metaphors overlapping. Middleton is more circumspect about associating the principal characters with homoerotic behaviour, but not entirely silent. Commenta-

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White Duke Some that are pleased to make a wanton on't Call it infirmity of blood, flesh-frailty, But certain there's a worse name in your books for't.

Black Knight The trifle of all vices, the mere innocent,

The very novice of this house of clay: venery!

tors have been rather coy about the line that follows the Black Knight's identification of the White Duke's last hidden vice as `venery': `If I but hug thee hard I show the worst on't' (5.3.127), which appears to mean `If I embrace you closely I will show you the worst of [venery]': i.e. I will reveal my own sexual excitement. This may not be specifically homoerotic: it perhaps suggests a state of permanent sexual arousal, satyr-like, in tune with his utterly self-confident villainy. But it is surely significant that it is the White Duke to whom he confides this. The whole theme treads dangerously on the nature of Buckingham's relations with King James. In this context it is less to the point whether there ever was a physical relationship between the two men than that contemporaries clearly thought there was, though of course it could not be openly discussed (Bergeron; Lockyer, pp. 33, 233±4). Perhaps the most remarkable evidence of the public perception of Buckingham's sexuality occurs in William Laud's diary for 3 July 1625, where (in Latin) he records: `In my sleep it seemed to me that the Duke of Buckingham got into bed where he acted towards me most lovingly and it seemed to me that many people entered the room and saw it' (Lamont and Oldfield, 1975, pp. 44±5). Of course, this probably tells us a good deal about Laud's own sexuality and about the systemic conflation of political and sexual power relations in the early modern period (which is partly my theme here). But I think it also gives us an unguarded glimpse into the public imagination of Buckingham. As regards A Game at Chess in this context, by far the most pointed sodomitical reference occurs right at the end of the play, when the White Duke `bags' his Black counterpart: White Duke Room for a sun-burnt, tansy-faced beloved,

An olive-coloured Ganymede, and that's all

That's worth the bagging.

(5.3.211±13) `An olive-coloured Ganymede' is a greenish catamite; `olive-coloured' clearly identifies Don Carlos, Duke of Olivares, grand chamberlain of Philip IV, as the Black Duke. The relationship between Philip IV ± a young and new king ± and his minister would probably have meant little to English audiences; besides, the Black Duke is a very minor character in the play, who never speaks more than two lines at a time, and only ever in support. It is therefore rather surprising that he is accorded the prominence of being the last character into the bag. Most striking of all, Olivares

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was significantly older than his king (37 in 1624 as against Philip's 19) so to dub him the `Ganymede' is pointedly inappropriate in terms of age. The relationship between Philip IV and Olivares in fact somewhat resembled the old one between James in Scotland and his cousin, the Duke of Lennox: a vulnerable young king and a charismatic older politique (Elliott and Brockliss, 1999). But Middleton turns that on its head here. It is difficult not to conclude that English audiences were expected to `apply' (by inversion) the Jove/Ganymede relationship of the Spanish Duke and his King to the ageing James and his own young Duke/favourite. In short, I think there are compelling reasons to suppose that Middleton was being satirical at the expense of the senior members of `the White House', and especially of the White Duke, even as he celebrates their conversion to the anti-Spanish cause. For this reason I agree with Heinemann that Buckingham was an unlikely sponsor for the play, but I am still not persuaded that any other sponsor (such as Pembroke) was necessary. It seems to me likely, on the evidence of his acute reading of other texts, that Sir Henry Herbert recognised and understood some of the implications I have been outlining; but if so, they did not disturb him. I suggest this is less surprising than many would suppose, if we think back to the example of Believe As You List. Because everything I have outlined here remains a matter of ambiguity, of implication, or of inference. On the surface, Howard-Hill is absolutely right: `None of the king, prince, duke, and archbishop could have read the play without gratification at the manner in which they were depicted'. Which is precisely what it was Herbert's function to ensure. It was not part of his remit to police Middleton's private intentions or an audience's capacity to think laterally. Once again, Herbert's record of Charles I's response to The King and the Subject is instructive (see pp. 14±15). That play appears to have been more openly critical of Charles's personal rule than Middleton had ever been about `the White House'. Yet the king merely marked the key passage as `too insolent, and to bee changed' (Herbert, p. 204). Herbert, I suggest, judged that the indirect satire of the White House in A Game at Chess fell short of that line, at least until `personations' tipped the balance. If this `reading' of the era's dramatic censorship does not square with popular notions of Stuart absolutism, I suggest it is entirely consistent with a very patrician (and some would say very English) response to a medium whose significance literary scholars are sometimes inclined to get out of proportion (Yachnin, 1991). In most circumstances aristocrats were secure enough in their status not to acknowlege veiled satire against themselves; they would not dignify it with their notice.

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Ironically, it was Don Carlos Coloma ± of all people ± who put this into words better than anyone, in his protest about the play: `so offensive to my royal master (if, indeed, the grandeur and inestimable value of his royal person could receive any offense from anybody, and especially from men of such low condition as ordinarily are the authors and actors of such follies:)' (Chess, p. 193). For reasons we have observed, Don Carlos chose, on behalf of his royal master, to `receive . . . offense', thus precipitating the enquiry. None of the English deigned to be offended on their own behalf.

The Lansdowne Text (British Library Ms. Lansdowne 690) of `A Game at Chess' The notoriety of A Game at Chess was such that there was a demand for copies of the play, which Middleton himself attempted to meet, in conjunction with Ralph Crane, the scrivener who regularly worked on texts for the King's Men (Howard-Hill, 1972). Of particular interest is one of the copies (British Library Ms. Lansdowne 690) for which Crane was solely responsible. The issue here is that Crane seems, in effect, to have censored the text. The main omission, as I observed earlier, is of a whole scene (3.2.). It is not long ± some 39 lines ± and does not materially advance the plot, so that it would hardly be missed by anyone who did not know it existed. The previous scene (in which the Black Queens' Pawn is apparently helping the Black Bishop's Pawn in his seduction of the White Queen's Pawn) leads directly into the following one, and Crane has no problem in producing a seamless link. We have already seen something of the content of what was omitted, and there must be every possibility that Crane left it out because of the impropriety of its sexual content. Yet this presupposes attitudes to obscenity in Crane's time (either Crane's own or what he judged to be those of the manuscript's recipient) which are difficult to square with the record. I showed in Chapter 3 `Obscenity and Profanity' that when we examine Sir Henry Herbert's apparently prudish response to such matters (especially in respect of Fletcher's The Woman's Prize) it proves impossible to separate his concern over `obsceanes' or `publique ribaldry' from his wider concerns about politics and religion (see pp. 51±5). As in the defining instance of early modern obscenity, Pietro Aretino, political satire and sexual candour are only different registers of the same discourse: and Middleton, as we shall see, certainly knew his Aretine. So before jumping to the conclusion that Crane was simply prudish in this instance, we need to consider the possibilities more widely.

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Firstly, we need to understand something of Middleton and Crane's working practices in producing their manuscript copies. One of Trevor Howard-Hill's major achievements in Middleton's `Vulgar Pasquin' has been to unravel a genealogy of the six surviving manuscripts of the play, linking them with the two distinct printed versions which were eventually produced on the continent. There is no need to rehearse the whole story here, except to point out that Crane worked somewhat independently of Middleton, introducing a number of distinctive features and readings of his own. In part these changes must have been forced on him by the state of the texts from which he started. Michael Taylor outlines the problems posed by `Middleton's habits as a writer of manuscripts. He uses small capitals or minuscules at the heads of lines, crowds lines into a small space, and occasionally completes verse lines at the left of the margin. [There is] a general tendency in Middleton to write a prose that often sounds like indifferent verse and a verse that would have been better off for having been prose' (M. Taylor, 1995, p. xx). Crane was extremely professional in reducing this chaos to order and producing, in the Lansdowne manuscript, what Howard-Hill describes as `the most elegant and readable of all the Game texts' (1995, p. 171). In the process, however, he became an editor of the text, as much as a copyist, and was not heavily constrained by considerations of what precisely Middleton wrote. So, for example, Middleton commonly wrote long, loosely structured periods, with explanatory insertions and sub-clauses that often make it difficult to determine where ideas begin and end, or to see the shape of the whole passage. Modern editors tend to steer us through these with commas and semi-colons, but Crane used brackets, which often seem to me to do the job more clearly and effectively ± albeit sometimes at the expense of a degree of ambiguity and what may be an element of deliberate free association on Middleton's part. Crane also punctuated far more heavily than Middleton did, and represented elisions in more elaborate forms (e.g. `they'had' for Middleton's `theyde'). And there are a number of other usages where Crane's instincts often overrode his copying brief, such as a preference for `It's' over `'Tis', `mine/thine' over `my/ thy', `hath/doth' over `has/does' ± not in all cases or systematically, but enough to be noticeable. Alongside such matters of style and presentation, however, Crane also became an editor in a more substantive way, actually cutting passages that there is no reason to suppose he was not well aware that Middleton had written. He also made cuts in another of the manuscripts for which he was responsible, what is now the Bodleian Library Ms. Malone 25,

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which is some 800 lines shorter than the fullest versions of the play. In that case the elisions seem to have been made purely with a view to making the text shorter, and so quicker and cheaper to transcribe; they preserve the essential outline of the action. But in the Lansdowne manuscript other concerns seem paramount. It is firstly apparent (by comparison with Middleton's Trinity College holograph of the play), that Crane was very sensitive about the use of oaths and expletives. This would always have been a concern for texts used in the theatre, after the 1606 Act of Abuses. But this is emphatically not a text for the theatre ± it is a document to be read ± and would never have come under the eye of the Master of the Revels. So there is something personal about the fastidiousness with which Crane eliminates even very mild oaths, reflecting either his own misgivings or his assumption about those of the intended recipient of the text; a copy of this quality was almost certainly commissioned, and Crane doubtless knew who it was for, but the identity is lost to us. `Hah! by this hand' (2.1.198) is omitted, as is `Mass' (4.2.96) ± another naturally goes by the board in 3.2. Where Middleton used `Light' (Trinity) and `slid' (Bridgewater-Huntington) Crane uses neither (5.3.87); similarly `sfoote' (Trinity), and `slid' (Bridgewater-Huntington) both disappear (5.3.188). Sometimes Crane simply tones things down: `Plague of' becomes `Out on' (2.2.98), `cursed' `hapless' (2.2.193), `A pox' `Mischief' (5.2.84), `Death' `How' (5.2.116). In these terms Crane's text is chastely inoffensive. It also seems likely that Crane was uncomfortable with the play's sensual explicitness. But his room to manúuvre was much less. So in the following passage: I must uphold his reverence,

Especially in public, though I know

Priapus, guardian of the cherry gardens, Bacchus and Venus' chit, is not more vicious. (1.1.267±70) Crane's omission of (my) italicised line is probably not accidental; the passage is intelligible without the line (if you know your classical mythology), but he spares us the phallic suggestiveness of `Priapus' and the lewd allusion to the female genitalia in `cherry gardens'. Similarly, where Middleton wrote `Time and fair temper would have wrought her pliant' (2.1.53), Crane rendered it `Time and fair temper would have wrought her pleasant': we may suspect that he was trying to be less explicit.

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Middleton: Censorships of A Game at Chess 157

Given the nature of the play, however, these are minor victories in a war that was well and truly lost. Lust is so remorselessly a metaphor for political and religious ambition that the play's sexual suggestiveness is pronounced, even by Jacobean standards. And Crane could hardly alter that without radically altering the play. We may suppose, then, that he empathised to a degree with the White Queen's Pawn when the Black Knight sought to `torment [her] modesty' with devilish ingenuity: And in a room filled all with Aretine's pictures, More than the twice twelve labours of luxury; Thou shalt not see so much as the chaste pommel Of Lucrece' dagger peeping. (2.2.256±59) She will be forced to kneel in a room surrounded by pornography, without the slightest mitigation of modesty or hope of escape; the `pommel of Lucrece' dagger' she will not see (with its promise of virtuous suicide) is a lewdly oblique suggestion of the phalluses she will see. Aretine's influence registers, however indirectly. But Crane rendered all this as Middleton wrote it, whatever his feelings on the matter. Another omission suggests that he was also uncomfortable with the play's scatalogical strain, which is always unavoidably present in the Black Knight/Gondomar's anal fistula. The Black Knight himself alludes to it with a discreet ambiguity which Crane did not disturb: Black Knight Qui cauteÂ, casteÂ, that's my motto ever.

I have travelled with that word over most kingdoms

And lain safe with most nations, of a leaking bottom.

(2.1.171±3) The last clause appears to mean `despite a leaking ship', but would clearly be received as a reference to the fistula. In the closing minutes of the play, however, Crane cut a much cruder allusion, by the Fat Bishop: Foh, the politician is not sound i'th'vent;

I smell him hither.

(5.3.209±10)

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There would seem to be no other grounds for omitting this but ones of taste. Other changes are not always so easy to classify. One line (3.1.71) was probably overlooked as Crane moved from one folio to another; another omission (4.1.43) may simply be the result of an eye-skip. There remain, however, two fairly substantial passages, the reasons for whose omissions by Crane I hesitate to guess at: I have writ this book out of the strength and marrow Of six and thirty dishes at a meal, But most on't out of cullis of cock-sparrows; 'Twill stick and glue the faster to the adversary. 'Twill slit the throat of their most calvish cause, And yet I eat but little butcher's meat In the conception. (2.2.21±7) This is the Fat Bishop in self-satisfied mode, reflecting on the luxury he enjoys as a religious turncoat ± though his undoing is to be that he is never satisfied. It is all expressed in the aphrodisiac language of food; the `cullis [rich broth] of cock-sparrows' reflects on their proverbial lechery. As we have observed, gluttony and lechery are key vices in the play, variously afflicting the White and Black Houses and later specifically the White Duke/Buckingham. But there is nothing here that is self-evidently more offensive than what follows it. The other passage is: Black Knight [Aside] A shrewd retort!

He's made our Bishop smell of burning too;

Would I stood further off; were't no impeachment

To my honour or the game, would they'd play faster.

(2.2.158±61) This is the Black Knight reflecting on the `shrewd retort' of the White Knight to the Black Bishop, who has just accused the White Bishop of hypocrisy. Since this is clearly a positive reflection on the White Knight/ Charles, and shows the general dissatisfaction of the Black Knight with the `play' of the rest of his House, it is difficult to see how anyone could have found it offensive. It may just be, in both these instances, that Crane was cutting corners, trimming passages that make no material contribution to the plot.

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And it is entirely possible that Scene 3.2 was omitted altogether on similar grounds; nothing here involves the main protagonists at all. In Crane's judgment it may have represented stage business ± clowning ± than an constituting an integral part of the text. This opens up the whole question of the manuscript as a text for reading, as distinct from a script for the theatre. There are some indications, quite apart from the sheer quality of the penmanship, that Crane thought of what he was producing as (what later ages would dub) a literary text. In particular, each act and scene is formally introduced in Latin, in the quasi-Terentian manner that had become standard for the printing of drama (such as the works of Jonson and Chapman) with clear pretensions to be `literature', rather than mere stage-plays (Howard-Hill, 1990a). He is much more consistent about this than Middleton himself in the Trinity holograph. Conversely, however, he is much more perfunctory about stage directions, which are functional but rarely descriptive or evocative. While no text of the play could be described as an account of the play as performed, the Lansdowne manuscript is often the least helpful witness in this regard. So, for example, in the very busy opening moments of Act 5, Crane records firstly Enter the Black Knight (in his litter) and the Black Bishop's Pawn (above) and shortly afterwards Enter Black House, meeting the White Knight and Duke. The Trinity text precedes everything else with Music, which Archdall describes as Loud, and Bridgewater-Huntington and Rosenbach render as Low. Trinity indicates that the Black Knight `calls' from his litter, while Bridgewater-Huntington, Rosenbach and the first quarto describe that litter ± a key prop ± as passing in haste over the stage. Trinity precedes the second stage direction with Hautboys, Archdall specifically nominates the King, Queen and Duke among the Black House, other versions add the Knight, and most indicate that they are accompanied by Pawns; most other versions also introduce the following action with words to the effect that the Black Bishop's Pawn entertains them with this Latin oration. In short, Lansdowne is perfectly functional: we can follow what is going on. But the other versions, all in different and often minor ways, give us more of the flavour and detail, making it much easier to reconstruct something of the stage experience. This is an extreme example, but it is not finally unrepresentative of one characteristic which distinguishes Lansdowne from other witnesses of the play. All of which gives support to the possibility that Crane omitted Scene 3.2. on the grounds that he considered it to be stage-business rather than part of the `literary' text which he was preparing for his reader. We may recall the address by Richard Jones, the printer, `To the Gentlemen

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Readers, and others that take pleasure in reading Histories' in his 1590 edition of Marlowe's Tamburlaine: `I have purposely omitted and left out some fond and frivolous gestures, digressing and, in my poor opinion, far unmeet for the matter, which I thought might seem more tedious unto the wise than any way else to be regarded' (Marlowe, 1976, p. 5). Jones does not deny that Marlowe wrote these `fond and frivolous gestures', presumably opportunities for clowning. He nevertheless censors them in deference to the presumed taste of his `Gentlemen Readers'. We cannot rule out the possibility that Crane did something similar to this copy of A Game at Chess. There is a further possibility, deriving from what I have suggested about the treatment of `obsceanes' elsewhere. Which is that Crane was sensitive to the politics of the scene rather than to its indecency. The scene involves none of the principal, identifiable characters. Yet its unabashed discussion of `the game' in terms of who is (homosexually) `firking' whom confirms, as it were, the terms of the play's wider discourse. It is only when we are alert to `the game' in such terms that the possibility of allusions to Buckingham's relations with James (such as I discussed above) are apparent. Such allusions are not inaccessible without Scene 3.2: but we are primed for them, and they suggest themselves much more readily, if the scene is there. While none of this precludes Crane's having omitted Scene 3.2. on grounds of simple obscenity which he found (or judged his client would find) distasteful, the wider picture should give us pause before jumping to this conclusion. The possibility that he was cutting corners at a time when he was clearly working flat out to supply the demand for copies of the play; or that he was consciously modelling a readerly text that minimised its association with stage action; or that he was muting some of the potential anti-court, anti-Buckingham sub-text in the play: these, or a combination of such motives, may all have played their part. Of this manuscript, as of the wider phenomenon of the reception of A Game at Chess, we may well conclude that (to paraphrase my own opening) all judgements are ultimately a reading of the ideology of early modern literary taste, rather than of this single text.

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Buggeswords: the Case of Sir John Hayward's Life of Henry IV

i) Hayward Dr John Hayward's The first part of the life and reign of King Henry IV is known to literary scholars if for no other reasons than that the history it recounts is essentially the same as that depicted in Shakespeare's Richard II, that both texts appear to have come under the particular scrutiny of the authorities, and that both texts were associated, however inadvertently, with the Earl of Essex's rebellion in February, 1601 (Albright, 1927b, 1931; Heffner; Schoenbaum, 1985; Barroll, 1988; Clegg, 1997b).1 Samuel Harsnett is known, if at all, as the author of A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (1603), a satirical exposure of supposed Roman Catholic exorcisms, which provided Shakespeare with a vocabulary of demonic possession which is most forcefully deployed in King Lear, but also surfaces in other plays, including Othello and The Winter's Tale. What brings Hayward and Harsnett together (other than the fact, as we shall see, that they were at college together in Cambridge) is that Harsnett was the man who granted a licence to Hayward's book, an action which had far-reaching, and potentially fatal, consequences for both of them. Hayward's tale has been told several times, from several angles, and I do not wish to repeat more of it than is strictly necessary (Dowling; S.L. Goldberg; Benjamin; Levy, 1967, pp. 258±64; Clegg, 1997a, pp. 202±10).2 Surprisingly, however, there is still no comprehensive account of the affair. The fullest, by Margaret Dowling, says nothing about Lord Chief Justice Popham's `Interrogatories . . . to be administered to Dr Hayward', only the two sets of notes left by Sir Edward Coke. She also says very little about Harsnett, and makes relatively little of the chronology of events, which seems crucial. Harsnett's part in the affair is less well documented, 162

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though it has received some attention (Brownlow, pp.174±81; Greg, 1956). What I wish to do, in looking at Hayward and Harsnett together, is to highlight something which earlier accounts do not bring out: that is, what the whole affair tells us about Elizabethan press licensing and censorship. And that is a tale that rattles on down to the time of the Civil War, because Hayward's book, though effectively suppressed in 1599 and never re-licensed, remained in print through the first half of the century, going through four pirated (or otherwise surreptitious) editions, with no apparent let or hindrance (Jackson). An entry for 9 January 1599 in the Register of the Stationers' Company records that Harsnett had given a licence to Hayward's book. He had done so in his capacity as a domestic chaplain of Richard Bancroft, Bishop of London, who was Harsnett's principal patron at this stage in his career. Harsnett was already 37, had spent most of his adult life at Cambridge University and was (as we shall see) no stranger to theological controversy. His move to London followed shortly upon Bancroft's elevation to the bishopric in 1597, when he preferred Harsnett to the vicarage of Chigwell in Essex; to this was added the prebend of Mapesbury in August 1598, which made him a prebendary of St Paul's, a position commonly held by licencers.3 Under a Star Chamber decree of 1586, the authority for censoring and licensing most printed books fell jointly to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London. This decree is often cited as evidence of the Elizabethan authorities' determination to exert tight ideological control (Wickham, 1959±81, 2.1: p. 94). It is not commonly observed, however, that this system of licensing was not in origin a product of government policy. It was actually brought in at the request of the Stationers' Company, who paid good money to get the matter through the Court of Star Chamber (Clegg, 1997a, pp. 57±65). As Edward Arber, the Victorian editor of their Register, observes, the `Star Chamber decree of the 23rd June 1586 . . . was undoubtedly promoted, not by the Government, but by the principal Stationers chiefly as a protection for their own literary property as an article of commerce' (Arber, 3, p. 17. The text of the decree is reproduced in 2, pp. 807±12). He cites two payments made by `certain of the Company toward the charges of sending out of the new orders [one entry reads ``decrees''] of the star Chamber as was agreed upon by order of court' ± the Court being the Stationers' own ruling body (Arber, 1, pp. 515, 524). Their motives are not actually stated, but Arber is surely right in seeing commercial self-interest at the bottom of it. The Stationers enjoyed a legal monopoly of printing, which they guarded jealously. A more clearly defined and circumscribed system of licensing (than the various

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measures applied since the time of Henry VIII) had the double virtue of promoting good relations with the authorities and preserving their monopoly. The authorities, for their part, doubtless found it convenient to exploit this commercial self-interest as a basis for their own system of control: it was not in the interests of the trade as a whole to let through anything that would cause real offence. There are striking analogies here with what I have described elsewhere as the collusive supervision of the acting companies through the Master of the Revels. The authorities could move with ruthless energy if the system of authority itself was abused, as happened with the `Martin Marprelate' pamphlets (1588±90), which were printed on unlicensed presses. But, for the most part, the system worked smoothly and uncontentiously during the 1590s, with a degree of informality that the Hayward case itself was to underline. One measure of this is that, by the late 1590s, it was not uncommon for works ± usually, though not always, trivia like ballads ± to be published without any clerical authorisation at all, but merely under the warrant of the wardens of the Stationers' Company. The bishops did, on occasion, exercise their licensing authority personally (especially for works of theology), but, for the most part, they delegated it to deputies. In 1588 Archbishop Whitgift drew up a list of 12 such deputies, all minor clergy (Greg and Boswell, pp. 28±9). The appointment and supervision of clerical censors devolved in practice mainly on the Bishop of London, and licensing duties became informally associated with some of the posts in his gift. There is no evidence that those who filled these posts were more vigorously screened, or indeed trained, than anyone else taking minor orders in the church. And this seems to have been how Samuel Harsnett became involved. Barely three weeks after becoming prebend of Mapesbury, Harsnett licensed his first book for the press (William Smyth's Gemma Fabri, 21 August 1598; Arber, 3, p. 124). In the next four months or so he licensed a further nine books, before putting his hand to Hayward's Life of Henry IV. By October 1599 he was further preferred to the rectorship of St Margaret's, Fish Street, a post previously occupied by William Cotton, who was on Whitgift's original list. It should be observed, however, that such licensing only occupied a small part of Harsnett's professional attention. Quite apart from his regular clerical duties, he was already closely following Bancroft's prosecution of the puritan, John Darrell, for performing illicit (and possibly fraudulent) exorcisms. At Bancroft's instigation Harsnett was to write a satirical denunciation of the whole affair, A Discovery of the Fraudulent Practices of One John Darrel (Stationers' Register, 15 November 1599).

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There is no evidence that Harsnett was aware he was doing anything out of the ordinary in licensing Hayward's book. There are two other entirely uncontroversial entries under his hand recorded in the Stationers' Register on the same day, one for `A letter sent from Octavia to her Husband Marcus Anthonius into Egypt' (a poem by Samuel Daniel) and one for A Brief and True Declaration of the Sickness, Last Words, and Death of the King of Spain Philip the Second (Arber, 3, p. 134). And the consequences of the signature to Hayward's book were not sudden, but took fully 18 months to unfold. As I shall argue, this is because what the book meant (or, more correctly, how it was construed) changed radically, as a result of changing circumstances and the roles of those who actually read it. As modern reader-response theory so graphically demonstrates, hermeneutics are not static but dynamic, a fact of which censors are aware, but for practical purposes have to ignore. What happened to both Hayward and Harsnett is that they found themselves at the mercy of that fact. The sequence of events (some of which has to be taken on trust from testimony which was self-interested, and so may not be altogether reliable) appears to have been this: the book was published in February 1599 by John Wolfe, a month or so after gaining its licence; between licensing and publication it acquired a florid dedication, in Latin, to the Earl of Essex (signed by Hayward), and a Preface to the Reader, signed `A.P.'. Wolfe later declared that the decision to dedicate it to Essex was made jointly by Hayward and himself, when the book was already finished, on the grounds that it dealt with military matters in Ireland, such as Essex himself was about to undertake, and that he had personally taken it to Essex for his approval, since Hayward was ill at the time. The book was an immediate success, selling five or six hundred copies in three weeks and causing a good deal of comment, as John Chamberlain reported to Dudley Carleton: . . . the treatise of Henry the Fourth is reasonably well written, the author is a young man of Cambridge toward the Civil Law. Here has been much descanting about it, why such a story should come out at this time, and many exceptions taken, especially to the epistle which was a short thing in Latin dedicated to the Earl of Essex, and objected to by him in good earnest, whereupon there was a commandment it should be cut out of the book, yet I have got you a transcript of it that you may pick out the offence if you can, for my part I can find no such buggeswords, but that everything is as it is taken. (Chamberlain, 1, p. 70)

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This was 1 March and Chamberlain was well informed. Essex had indeed belatedly objected, to Whitgift, about the dedication; when Essex was tried for his disobedience and mismanagement of the Irish expedition (June 1600), Francis Bacon cast this part of the affair in the most cynical light possible, asking: `who was thought fit to be patron of that book, but my Lord of Essex, who after the book had been out a week wrote a cold formal letter to my Lord of Canterbury to call it in again, knowing belike that forbidden things are most sought after' (Harrison, p. 264). At the time, however, Whitgift simply ordered the Wardens of the Stationers' Company to remove the offending dedication from all the remaining copies, which they did, and the rest of the edition quickly sold out. By Easter (8 April), however, Wolfe judged that demand warranted a further printing, and so approached Hayward for a fresh text; Hayward obliged, with a copy containing an Epistle Apologetical, protesting the innocence of his intentions, and 1500 copies of this new edition were printed (Dowling, pp. 221±2). Bancroft apparently took it upon himself to seize the lot, and to burn them all at his own house. No explanation was offered at the time, but the unspoken subtext to the whole affair was clearly the status and the (real or supposed) ambitions of the Earl of Essex. As F.J. Levy observes, `had Hayward not dedicated his book to Essex, all might still have gone well' (p. 259). Since the muddled Islands Voyage of 1597, Essex's standing with the Queen had been in the balance, and he had dangerous enemies at court, notably Robert Cecil and Walter Ralegh. But his appointment as Lord Deputy in Ireland, charged with putting down Tyrone's rebellion, gave him immediate prestige, command of an army in the field, and the possibility of a victorious return which would greatly enhance his position in the Privy Council. In the circumstances, any work associated with him was bound to be of interest to the political (and book-buying) classes. Whitgift's decision to allow the remaining copies of the first edition to be sold, after the dedication has been removed, suggests that he agreed with Chamberlain: `for my part I can find no such buggeswords, but that everything is as it is taken' or, possibly, that he saw no point in taking any action against it which would run the risk both of giving it added notoriety and of offending Essex. Bancroft's action in burning the second edition (this some two weeks after Essex had left for Ireland) speaks of convenience, of political expediency, and was of questionable legality. Neither author nor publisher had been accused of an offence, much less convicted, and the point of burning it in private was clearly to hush the business up rather than to make an object lesson of it.

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Throughout this business, the authorities were very sensitive to the question of Essex's standing with the people. It was not just that he was `popular', but that he seemed to court popularity in a way that some thought unbecoming of an aristocrat. Hayward's book was not the only item in this connection which was quietly, but efficiently, suppressed. In August 1600 the Privy Council `called in' a series of prints by Thomas Cockson depicting prominent noblemen; it seems clear that the engraving of Essex, circulating since earlier that year and describing him, among other things, as `God's elected', is what they were particularly anxious to keep out of the people's hands (McCoy, 1989, pp. 96±8). It has been noted by several people (since this is something in which Hayward and Shakespeare parallel each other closely, though neither had sanctions in their original sources) that Hayward in his book depicts the usurper Bolingbroke as a `popular' aristocrat: `The Duke for his part was not negligent to uncover the head, to bow the body, to stretch forth the hand to every mean person, and to use all other complements of popular behaviour, where with the minds of the common multitude are much delighted and drawn; taking that to be courtesy, which the severer sort accompt abasement' (Hayward, p. 71). A book, like a print, closely associated with Essex, might be construed as another `complement of popular behaviour'. Nothing was made of this, however, in any of the later interrogations of Hayward, though Lord Chief Justice Popham did pose the question: `Might he think that this history would not be very dangerous to come among the common people?' (CSPD, p. 404). The restraint initially shown by Whitgift and Bancroft in respect of Hayward's book certainly contrasts sharply with the measure they introduced less than two months later, in respect of a range of supposed irregularities in the book trade. The Bishops' Order (entered in the Stationers' Records 1 June 1599) was a multi-faceted affair. The best known aspect of it was a denunciation of a string of satirical and contentious works, including Marston's Pygmalion and The Scourge of Villainy, Davies's Epigrams and Hall's Biting Satires. There were specific injunctions `That no Satires or Epigrams be printed hereafter' and `That all Nashe's books and doctor Harvey's books be taken wheresoever they be found and that none of their books be ever printed hereafter' (Arber, 3, p. 677). All the nominated books were `called in' and a public example was made by their burning in the Stationers' Hall (McCabe; Clegg, 1997a, pp. 198±217). I will observe here, as no one else seems to have done, that Harsnett had been involved in licensing more than his fair share of the books that were banned, but will defer to later the possible implications of this.

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The condemnation of these satires was probably not related specifically to the fortunes of Essex, but reflects more generally the tensions of a reign inexorably drawing to a close with no successor nominated or agreed upon. A second facet of the Order, however, was almost certainly prompted by Hayward's book: `That no english histories be printed except they be allowed by some of her Majesty's Privy Council' (p. 677). This is a telling retreat from the 1586 decree, inasmuch as it acknowledges that one category of books was beyond the competence of the licensing system then instituted. The Privy Council had, in the past, at least notionally taken responsibility for all printed books, though there are few recorded instances of their taking an active role in such matters.4 The last facet of the Bishops' Order was `That no plays be printed except they be allowed by such as have authority' (idem). This is probably a back-handed compliment to the growing perception of at least some play-texts as serious literature (or, at least, as valuable commercial properties). As mentioned earlier, by the late 1590s a number of minor works were entered in the Stationers' Register simply on the authority of the Wardens of the Company. While most of these were ballads, chap-books and other ephemera, a few plays did slip through the licensing net into print in this way; one of the most striking examples, in view of the extent to which its concerns overlap with those of Hayward's book, is Shakespeare's Richard II. This was licensed to the printer, Andrew Wise, on 29 August 1597 solely `by appointment from Master Warden Man' (Arber, 3, p. 89). The tighter control of the licensing of plays for print, which eventually passed from Church control to that of the Revels Office, was one of the more lasting effects of the Bishops' Order (Dutton, 1991, pp. 148±50, 153, 233). It is far from clear that the ban on satires and epigrams had any effect at all. John Weever, for example, seems to have brought out his Epigrams within weeks of it ± albeit by-passing licensers and the Stationers' Register altogether, with no apparent come-back, a salutary reminder of the distance between the theory and practice of regulation in the period. By 1601 he apparently had no problem whatever obtaining a regular licence and entry for The Whipping of the Satyre (Arber, 3, p. 190; Honigmann, pp. 23±5, 40). Nor is there any evidence of English histories actually being referred to Privy Councillors. This might well have been the end of the Hayward affair, had not Essex's career then taken the disastrous turn it did. But the Irish campaign was an unmitigated failure, laying him open to charges at least of vacillation and incompetence, at worst of collusion with the rebels and of abandoning his command and returning to Court (late September 1599), against the express orders of the Queen. Although he was put

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under house arrest, the authorities hesitated to prefer legal proceedings, partly because for a time he was seriously ill, but it seems likely that their main concern was uncertainty about how much support Essex might command, either in London or with the remaining forces in Ireland. In February 1600 a date was set for a trial, but then rescinded at the instigation of Robert Cecil (a fact which was made known, bringing Cecil unwonted popular credit, as he doubtless hoped). There is every sign that what was going on was a war of nerves, or a game of cat and mouse, with the twin aims of wrong-footing Essex and of maximising popular support for the authorities' actions. The State Papers Domestic, Elizabethan (Volume 274) assign to February 1600 (though with a query) Lord Chief Justice Popham's `Interrogatories . . . to be administered to Dr Hayward', bundling them with two copies of Hayward's `Epistle Apologetical' intended for the second edition of his book, and two brief sets of notes mainly by Sir Edward Coke, endorsed by him `the matter wherewith Dr Hayward was charged, and Dr Hayward's confession'. In another hand someone has written `Harsnet allowed it and passed the press' (CSPD, p. 405). There is actually no evidence that Popham did draw up these `Interrogatories' at this time or, if he did, that the questions in them were ever put to Hayward, then or later. But it is not unlikely that Popham drew them up for a trial of Hayward at this time, which was then deferred, like that of Essex himself. One of the copies of the `Epistle Apologetical' appears to be Hayward's original, which Wolfe was to tell Coke (13 July) he had delivered to Bancroft at the time the second edition of the book was seized. And Coke's notes (in Margaret Dowling's view) relate to the second formal examination of Hayward, on 22 January 1601 (Dowling, p. 213). All of these papers were perhaps bundled together at the time of that examination, though they relate to different phases of the investigation/ prosecution. Popham's questions do appear, however, to give voice for the first time to dark suspicions about the book. Apart from highlighting a number of possibly charged historical inaccuracies and inventions, he headed the list with `Who made the preface to the reader?' and `Wherein he conceives that book might be not only precepts but patterns for private direction and for matters of state, and instruct young men more shortly and old men more fully?' The preface, that is, might be read as alerting readers to a particular topical application of what followed, while the history itself raised a string of issues (taxation, Ireland, relationship between monarch, state and subject) which were arguably more pertinent to the end of the sixteenth century than that of the fourteenth, and

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which Hayward could not substantiate directly from his sources. Popham also shrewdly raised the question: `When he first resolved to set it forth, and at what time he began it?' (CSPD, pp. 404±45). Hayward later claimed (22 January 1601) that he `Began to write this history about a year before it was published, but had intended it a dozen years before, although he acquainted no man therewith' (CSPD, p. 540). The dedication (which even Chamberlain had commented on at the time of the book's publication) was in many ways the nub of the issue, since it could be construed as inciting casual readers to approach the history from a very precise, contemporary perspective, in ways that could be inflammatory (especially `amongst the common people' as Popham stressed). Essex ± addressed `Magnus siquidem es, et presenti judicio, et futuri temporis expectatio' (`Since you are great, both in the judgement of the present time, and in the expectation of the future') ± stood out as a Bolingbroke to Elizabeth's Richard II. There is every likelihood, however, that the authorities wanted to establish something even more damning than the tendentiousness of the prefatory material, and that is that there had been a degree of complicity between Essex and Hayward over it (perhaps even that A.P. was Essex himself), in which case a charge of criminal conspiracy over the book might be added to the other charges Essex faced.5 There is some evidence for this in Francis Bacon's late (and so unreliable) `Apophthegms New and Old' (1624±25) in which Bacon depicts himself as defending Hayward from the wrath of the Queen herself. She suggested to him that there might be `places in [the book] that might be drawn within case of treason', to which Bacon wittily replied that Hayward had borrowed so many passages from Tacitus that he might be prosecuted for felony, but hardly for treason. Later again the Queen apparently insisted that Hayward was not the true author but was shielding `some more mischievous person', saying that he ought to be racked to disclose the truth, though there is no evidence this actually happened (DNB, 1, p. 927, under `Sir John Hayward'). Indeed, no formal charge had yet been laid against Hayward, though we may suppose that word of the authorities' investigations found their way back to Essex. At bottom, the authorities seemed to argue that the parallels between the book and recent affairs were evidence that Essex was consciously modelling himself on Bolingbroke, and that this accounted for his treacherous behaviour in Ireland. The most compelling evidence for some such intention on the part of the authorities lies in a collection of papers outlining an outright charge of treason against Essex (CSPD, vol. 275, items 32 and 33 ± catalogued immediately after Harsnett's letter to Attorney General Coke, reprinted

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below, and dated 22 July 1600). This charge, which was never brought to court, involved counts of conspiracy with Jesuits and agents of the Pope, and accusations of treasonous complicity with the Irish rebel, Tyrone. The last item specifically claimed that `Essex's own actions confirm that intent of this treason. His permitting underhand that treasonable book of Henry IV to be printed and published; it being plainly deciphered, not only by the matter, and by the epistle itself, for what end and for whose behalf it was made, and also the Earl himself being so often present at the playing thereof, and with great applause giving countenance to it' (CSPD, pp. 453±5). This notoriously seems to relate Hayward's book to a dramatic version of the Richard II story, presumably Shakespeare's, though Shakespeare's Richard II antedates Hayward's Life of Henry IV by about three years; and this was still some seven months before the performance of the Richard II play on the eve of the Essex rebellion (a performance Essex himself did not attend). The question of whether Hayward actually drew on Shakespeare's play, or vice versa, is beside the present point. What matters is that, in the mind of someone contemplating prosecuting Essex for treason, his involvement with Hayward's book ± here construed as `permitting underhand that treasonable book of Henry IV. to be printed' ± stood on a par with negotiating with Jesuits and Irish rebels. In the upshot, none of these charges was preferred in court, though Bacon as one of the Crown prosecutors did raise the question of Essex's being `patron of that book', with the cynical construction of his belated repudiation of it already quoted. The failure to pursue any of these matters more directly, when Essex was belatedly brought to trial on 5 June, may be related to a perceptible half-heartedness about the prosecution as a whole. He was not in fact arraigned before a court of law at all (Star Chamber would have been usual), but rather censured in private proceedings at York House, before a panel of commissioners of 18 fellow Councillors and senior judges, a fact which was put to him as a sign of the Queen's mercy. The issue was put as contempt and disobedience in the Irish campaign, not disloyalty or treason. The outcome was not to be a legal sentence as such, but the Queen's own pronouncement of judgement upon him for his actions. Whether this unusual process reflects Elizabeth's own misgivings about treating her former favourite too harshly, or political circumspection about dealing with a man who still had powerful friends (most notably Lord Mountjoy, who now commanded the army in Ireland, a more substantial force than any at Elizabeth's immediate disposal), it is not easy to determine and beside the immediate point. What really matters, from the point of view of what

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happened to Hayward, Wolfe and Harsnett, is that the authorities involved the former two openly and the latter more discreetly only when matters hung delicately in the balance. The case against Essex had been spelled out, and each of the commissioners had spoken in censure of him. But the Queen had yet to pronounce final judgement, something that would not in fact happen until 26 August. It was on 11 July that Hayward was formally and publicly summoned before the Court of Star Chamber, where he was examined before the Lord Keeper, the Lord Admiral, the Secretary, and the Controller. Dudley Carleton, writing on 26 July, noted at the time the link between Hayward's arrest and the cat-and-mouse game with Essex: `My Ld of Essex remains prisoner, but at his owne custody. the Q. had given him liberty to go into the cuntrie, but recalled it againe upon the taking of Dor Haywood who for writing Henry the forth was comitted to the tower' (Dowling, p. 212). Attorney General Coke summarised the case for the prosecution most succinctly, `in proof that the Doctor selected a story 200 years old, and published it last year, intending the application of it to this time, the plot being that of a King who is taxed for misgovernment and his council for corrupt and covetous dealings for private ends; the King is censured for conferring benefits on hated favourites, the nobles become discontented, and the commons groan under continual taxation, whereupon the King is deposed, and in the end murdered' (CSPD, p. 499). For added conviction he cited the most damning passages from the book. The Lords deliberated for two days and then, convinced of his treasonable intent, sent Hayward to the Tower ± where he is on record as still being at Christmas, 1602, though apparently released by the time King James reached London in May 1603. On the same day that the Star Chamber convicted Hayward, Coke questioned his publisher, John Wolfe, eliciting much of the information about the sequence of publication, and responsibility for the various elements in the two editions, that I outlined earlier. Wolfe also claimed to have returned three for four times to see Essex after presenting him with the book, to get his opinion on it, but on each occasion to have been told he was too busy to see him (presumably before Essex's complaint to the Archbishop about the dedication). This was part of a consistent line of defence, from a man with a chequered history of confrontations with authority: he was an honest businessman, whose only contact with great men like Essex arose from a polite solicitude over texts dedicated to them; he did not have ready access to Essex and so (though he does not articulate this) could hardly have been party to any conspiracy with him; he was aggrieved that he had made no money at all

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from what should have been a very profitable venture, and was particularly indignant both about the loss of the whole of the second edition and about having been kept in prison for two weeks (CPSD, pp. 450±1; Plomer, pp. 14±15; Hoppe). No further action appears to have been taken against him, but the concerted and belated judicial action against Hayward and Wolfe demonstrated the potential vindictiveness of the authorities while the question of Essex's sentence hung in the air. The prosecution of Hayward himself, and the hints of a wider conspiracy suggested by drawing his publisher into the investigation, seem to have been shots in a war of nerves ± demonstrations to Essex himself (who was emotionally unbalanced throughout this period) of the rigors of the law, and barely veiled suggestions to the people at large of a wider background of disloyalty that warranted strict reprisals, though the exercise of the Queen's prerogative of mercy was not yet out of the question. To put it in a nut-shell, although Hayward's book had been carefully scrutinised almost from the time of its publication, it was not found to be of treasonable intent until it was politically convenient that it should be so. Leeds Barroll, in observing that the authorities paid much more attention to the Hayward business than they did to the performance of the Richard II play on the eve of the Essex rebellion, suggests that they may have thought of books as inherently more serious and dangerous than plays: `In Hayward's case, a book was deemed quite dangerous as a medium; in Shakespeare's case not the play but the persons involved in the production . . . were deemed dangerous because they were doing something they thought to be seditious' (1988, p. 454). I see no evidence that the medium, as such, made any difference. Hayward's book attracted attention, not for itself, but because it might provide prima facie evidence of Essex's treason. By the time the play became an issue, prima facie evidence was beside the point. The moment when the authorities chose to make a public issue of the book was the moment when Harsnett's licensing of the book also became an issue, because Hayward himself made it one: he argued that a book which has been properly `allowed' could hardly be against the law ± one authorised reading precluded subsequent, and more prejudicial ones. Sir Edward Coke pursued the matter by sending a messenger with a letter to Harsnett, eliciting an initial response and subsequently a letter, which I shall consider in detail shortly. For the moment it is sufficient to note that this exchange of letters was enough to settle the matter. Harsnett was never examined in person, despite the fact that some aspects of his handling of the licensing of the book were certainly open to uncharitable construction. The finger of suspicion was never turned publicly on Harsnett as it had been on

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Hayward and Wolfe, though Harsnett reacted as though that was a serious possibility. The rest of the saga of Hayward's book, as it related the Essex affair, is soon told. While Hayward himself remained in the Tower, Essex was actually set free, with no formal penalty except banishment from court. This was only half the truth, however, since Essex was heavily in debt and deprived of his primary income, which depended on royal favor. In the following months his opponents carefully monitored his growing desperation, anxious to anticipate where it would lead. By early 1601 it was clear that a crisis was imminent, and as part of the case Hayward was interviewed again (22 January), in the Tower, by Coke and Sir John Peyton. The record of this is, in some ways, even more illuminating than those of the earlier two interrogations, since Hayward went into considerable, and remarkably frank, detail about his adaptation and embellishment of his sources, constantly maintaining the traditional freedom of historians to enliven their narrative by transposing, and even inventing, appropriate material. He was quite open, for example, about transposing details from the reign of Henry II to that of Henry IV. He was careful, however, not to admit that any of these artful details were motivated by their applicability to contemporary affairs, though this is clearly what his accusers were out to elicit. Coke's notes begin with the most pointed evidence of this kind: `he pretende to wright a history past but entend to point at this very tyme'; `for neither armies nor strongholds are so great defences to a prince as the multitude of children, forts may decay, forces decrease etc'. The latter is a quotation from the opening pages of the history proper, the whole of which reads: `For neither armies, nor strongholdes are so great defences to a prince, as the multitude of children: Fortes may decay, and forces decrease, and both decline and fall away, either by variety of fortune, or inconstancie of mens desires: but a mans owne hand cleaveth close unto him; not so much in the blisses of prosperitie, which are equally imparted to others, as in the crosses of calamity, which touch none so neere as those that are neerest by nature'(pp. 1±2). Coke must have construed this as a reference to the Queen's unmarried state, the lack of children and her consequent lack of an acknowledged heir ± pointing to `the crosses of calamity' that might well ensue when she eventually died. The succession had always been a touchy subject with Elizabeth and her advisors, but, as her mortality became increasingly apparent, it preoccupied everyone at the centre of national affairs, not least Essex. In 1597 he had achieved the post he most coveted, that of Earl Marshal, who presided over the Court of Chivalry, embodying the ancient dignity

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and privileges of aristocracy and knighthood. As Richard McCoy argues, `if he read and pondered the results of the research he initiated on this high feudal office and sought to combine its jurisdiction with the Constable's, he might have felt himself authorised to broker the succession' (McCoy, 1989, p. 100). In fact, as early as 1595, the author of A Conference About the Next Succession to the Crown of England (believed to be the Catholic propagandist, Robert Parsons) had maliciously dedicated it to Essex, arguing `no man [is] like to have a greater part or sway in deciding of this great affair' (ibid., p. 101). The suspicion must be that Coke chose to read Hayward's book as a whole, so largely concerned with Henry IV's replacement of Richard II, as an allegory of the impending succession crisis: not necessarily about the forceful removal of Elizabeth (though that was partly the issue), but about who should dictate the terms of her successor's appointment. It might not be possible to establish that Essex sought the crown for himself; but it might be sufficient to establish that he intended to broker the succession so as to advantage himself at the expense of his rivals (as in fact Robert Cecil was eventually to do).6 Hayward certainly registered the Earl Marshalship prominently in his dedication ± `Comti Marescallo Angliae', to the Earl Marshall of England ± above all other titles and offices, after Earl of Essex itself. Coke's other primary point similarly attempts to pin Hayward's narrative not simply to disloyal contemporary applications, but to anticipations of events, which might be tied to Essex and provide evidence of his motives and ambitions: `he presupposed that there should be ill success in Ireland, when writing his book in `99 after the archtraitor was in his strength' (Dowling, p. 215). It is not entirely clear what he had in mind here, since, if the suggestion is that Hayward's depiction of Richard II's Irish campaign foreshadowed Essex's failures (which were somehow planned), the opposite would appear to be true: `This expedition at the first proceeded and succeeded exceedingly well, and the King obtained many victories, even without battell as leading his men to a slaughter rather then to a fight' (p. 60) ± this only coming to an end in some disarray when news of Bolingbroke's return to England reached him (p. 75). What is clear is that Coke believed that the book could be read not merely as a shadowing of contemporary affairs, but one that betrayed the long-term planning of `the archtraitor'. He recognised, however, that it was finally up to the Privy Council as to whether it should be read in that way: `to what end he selecteth this bloody story out of all the rest, of the unlawful deposition of a lawful king that had long reign, by an earl, I must in the end leave to your lordships' (Dowling, p. 215).

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In the end, no one bothered to pursue the matter further, presumably because Essex's abortive rebellion (8 February) rendered it irrelevant. Once he could be charged with armed insurrection a mere book became small beer, and did not even figure in the charges against him. It became merely ancillary evidence in the prosecution's argument that Essex was an inveterate schemer and the rebellion the product of long-laid plans. Robert Cecil, in particular, seized on Essex's supposed identification with Bolingbroke: These things appered by the book written in Henry IV., making the time seem like that of Richard II, to be reframed by him as by Henry IV. He kept this book 14 days to peruse, and when he knew many copies were dispersed, sent to the Metropolitan to have it called in as a dangerous book. He would have removed Her majesty's servants, stepped into her chair, and perhaps had treated her like Richard II. (Quoted in Clare, p. 64) Like the business of the staging of the play of Richard II at the Globe on the afternoon before the rebellion (mentioned by Bacon in the prosecution of Essex's Steward, Sir Gelly Meyrick, not of Essex himself), Hayward's book was evidence of the rebels' cast of mind, and of their intentions, but not in itself an act of treason. The rebellion had, in fact, transformed the status of all such representations of rebellion. Previously, Essex's opponents had been interested in Hayward's book, not because it might in itself be a serious incitement to rebellion, but because it might be possible to associate `the archtraitor', Essex, in a conspiracy to such incitement. Now that he stood openly exposed as a rebel, the book (and, more indirectly, the play) demonstrated the full scope of that rebellion. Essex and his followers claimed that they had never intended to challenge the Queen herself, merely to free her from the influence of evil counsellors. When asked during his imprisonment what authority he had for undertaking to `remove such evils as the commonwealth is burdened with', he replied, `that he was earl marshal of England, and needed no other warrant' (McCoy, 1989, p. 100). But the parallels between Bolingbroke and Essex told a different tale, with a different projected outcome. It doubtless served the prosecution best simply to keep reiterating what was by now the popular mythology of Hayward's book, that it embodied in coded form Essex's dark ambitions ± rather than cloud matters by trying to establish what they had several times failed to establish, a criminal collusion between the author and the dedicatee.

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The business of the licensing of Hayward's book is thus a footnote in a complex, unfolding narrative, its significance (or, as it turned out, relative insignificance) not finally established until the narrative itself was closed ± a closure enforced by men who were principal protagonists within it. With hindsight Essex was always a desperate, unstable man, doomed to failure, while the likes of Robert Cecil and Edward Coke represented legitimate government, `the authorities'. But that was not how it appeared at the time, or to the people involved. Two factions were, in effect, trying to write history as they went along, denouncing the other and authorising themselves, and the outcome remained in doubt until the coup itself failed.

ii) Harsnett When we turn to Harsnett's response to Coke's demand that he explain himself over the licensing of Hayward's book, we can see that he was at pains not merely to exonerate himself from blame, but also to associate himself with what he hoped were the `right' narratives (or, at the very least, to dissociate himself from the `wrong' ones), even trying to leave himself scope for a complete rewriting if the narrators themselves changed, at some future date: Right Worshipfull, I have not yet received eny bookes from my Lord of London and so am not able to performe my taske in comparing them according to my promise. this for grief of hart and confusion of face I am skarce able to write, that I shold be behinde hand to your most gracious divine kindnesse towards me. I have sent my aunswer enclosed the onelie part of my dutye that I cold performe, most humblie beseeching your goodnes to accept it in good part, and to be a father unto me as you have begunne. the god of Heven sees and knowes I am innocent. At casus Leso Numine crimen habet. my poor estate, my credit, my selfe and more then myselfe doe hang uppon your graciouse countenance for I muste crave pardon to tell an unmannerlie secrett, I have a poor weake gentlewoman my wife in child bed who since your messanger his being at myne house did neither eat, nor drinke nor sleape for feare, and yet I have twentie tymes reade over your most graciouse Lettars unto her. the Lord of Heven requite you for I and my poore frends shall never be able & so with tears I humblie take my Leave: from my poor house at Chigwell this xxti of July 1600.

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In moste humble wise complaininge sheweth unto your Worship your dailie Orator Samuel Harsnett, that where as the Author of a Pamphlet published in print in anno 99 Intituled the Raigne of King Henry the fourth hath endeavoured to excuse his publishinge the sayd pamphlett, as being allowed and approved by your sayd Orator, it may please your Worshipp in your grave wisdome to consider that this allegation can be no colour of excuse unto him in regard of these reasons ensuynge. Firste for that it hath been custome and use, for eny man that entended in good meaning to put a booke in print, the Author him selfe to present the booke unto the Examiner and to acquaynt him with his scope and purpose in the same: the Author of this pamphlet concealed him selfe and nether spake nor conferred with your orator concerning this pamphlett (notwithstanding we were both students togither in Pembrook hall in Cambridge and both of a tyme and standing in the Colledge) but the author delivered his pamphlet unto a gentleman in my Lord of London his house who begged your Orator his approbation unto the same in the name of a cantel of our Englishe chronicles phrased and flourished over onelie to shewe the Author his pretie Witt. Secondlie that whereas your Orator his approbation of eny booke whatsoever is but a leading and inducement to my Lord of London my Master to passe his Lordship his further approbation to the same without which his Lordship his further approbation your Orator his allowance is no sufficient warrant for the Author to prynt his booke: the author of this pamphlett published his pamphlett without my Lord and master his approbation at all, contrarie to warrant in that behalfe. Thirdlie the Author hath wronged your said Orator muche, and hathe abused your Worship with false enformation in alledging for him selfe that your Orator allowed his pamphlet as it was and is published in prynt. for that the Author knoweth in his conscience this is true that when his pamphlett had mine approbation it was heddlesse without epistle, preface, or dedication at all which moved me to thinke it was a meer rhetoricall exornation of a part of our Englishe historie to shewe the foyle of the Author his witt: after myne approbation gotten thereuntoe the Author foysted in an Epistle dedicatorie to the Earle of Essex

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This was his enclosure:

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Fourthlie it may please your grave wisdome graciouslie to consider your Orator his mean condition and capacitie that your sayd Orator is a poor divine unacquainted with bookes and arguments of state, and with consequences of that nature: that your Orator for ten or twelve yeares past neither spake with nor saluted the Author of this pamphlett, and so is cleer from privitye with his entendementes and overtures in the same: that your Orator sett to his hand sodeinlie as mooved by his freind never reading (uppon his salvation) more then one page of the hedlesse pamphlett for which his unadvised negligence he humblie beggeth your moste gracious milder Censure that it may be no imputation of bad meaninge unto him, who doth dailie in his poore calinge most hartilie and Zealouslie pray for the happinesse of her sacred Majestie and the state, and for the long continuance of her Highnes most graciouse, blessed, divine government over us, and doth from the bottom of his hart wishe shame and dreadfull confusion uppon all calumniators, and underminers of the same. (Quoted from Brownlow, pp. 175±7) The key to these curiously disingenuous, yet intensely revealing, documents is very probably Coke's initial letter to Harsnett, which has not survived. But we can deduce something of its tone and contents from Harsnett's reply. Coke had required two things of him: one was that he compare some books, perhaps the two printed versions of Hayward's book. (Wolfe had told Coke that he had `Delivered the original of the first edition, which was interlined and altered according to the second, to Mr. Barker, registrar of the high commission' [CSPD, p. 451]). The other was that he provide an `answer' or explanation as to how and why he had come to license Hayward's book. The former requirement apparently depended on Bancroft's delivery of these books, which was delayed. So Harsnett endeavours to remain in good odour by complying with the latter. And he does so in some hope that what he writes will be kindly received by Coke: he stresses Coke's `most gracious divine kindnesse towards me', `humblie beseeching your goodness to accept [myne answer] in good part, and to be a father unto me as you have begunne' (my emphasis); shamelessly playing on his wife's delicate state of advanced pregnancy, he broadly acknowledges that the letter which so terrified her contains within it some earnest that all may be well ± why else should he `twentie tymes reade over your most graciouse Lettars unto her'?

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which I neither allowed nor sawe, and which if I had seen I protest I shold never have allowed the rest of the Pamphlett.

It is difficult not to conclude that Coke had written something to the effect that all Harsnett needed to do was to tell the truth and he would not suffer, that he was not the real subject of attention. Of course, whether Harsnett would be wise to accept such assurances is a different matter (at a time when anything smacking of conspiracy might be used in the war of nerves with Essex), but it seems likely that he did not do so without taking advice from his patron, Bancroft. As F.W. Brownlow comments: In saying that his approval of a manuscript was `but a leading and inducement to my Lord of London' to give his approval, and that only the bishop's approval constituted authority to publish, Harsnett was probably stating the legal position correctly . . . Yet in practice everyone accepted the examiner's signature as sufficient authority. Nonetheless he probably made it at Bancroft's suggestion. If the bishops could not read books, and if their deputies, being `poor divines,' were inexperienced in matters of state, then a weakness in the censorship was revealed that would exonerate the bishops as well as their deputies should they be blamed for passing unsuitable matter. (pp. 177±8) Certainly, if Bancroft had not done so, Harsnett risked leaping from the frying pan to the fire, once the bishop discovered what he had written. That apart, there are four points of substance in Harsnett's account of himself and his actions: 1) an up-front admission that he knew Hayward, the two of them having been students together in the same Cambridge college in the 1580s; 2) nevertheless, they had not seen each other or otherwise communicated `for ten or twelve years past', though it would have been usual for an author to present himself in person before an examiner to obtain a licence for his book: the text was actually delivered to him via an unnamed `gentleman' in Bancroft's household; 3) he had not actually read the manuscript, but `sett to his hand sodeinlie as mooved by his friend never reading . . . more than one page of the hedlesse pamphlett'; 4) nevertheless, he was absolutely certain that it was indeed `heddlesse without epistle, preface, or dedication at all' when he licensed it, that he would not have licensed it otherwise, and that ± as the document then stood ± he had every reason to consider it `a meer rhetoricall exornation of a part of our Englishe historie to shewe the foyle of the Author his witt', and so not worth reading properly. It has to be said that, if Coke had been inclined to subject this to the same strong reading as he had Hayward's book, Harsnett would have been lucky to

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avoid the Tower itself, since it strains credibility to breaking point and beyond. The most dubious point is the delivery of the manuscript itself. We must take Harsnett's word that it was `custom and use' for wellintentioned authors to present themselves and their manuscripts in person to the examiner, and to explain the scope and drift of what they had written. I know of no corroboration that this was the usual practice, but it makes a lot of sense: nothing could better dissuade authors tempted to go beyond what was permitted, or better tie lawabiding ones collusively into a system of authorised licensing, than a requirement that they account personally for their works, face to face. In a relatively small community of writers it would create a very effective barrier/bond. And Coke would surely know if this was the case. But if so, why was Harsnett not more suspicious that Hayward had circumvented the usual practice, all the more when it meant that he had missed an opportunity to revive an old acquaintance? The fact of their having been at college together makes this more, not less, suspicious practice. At least, it does if we are to take it that Hayward specifically intended that Harsnett, and no one else, should licence his book. Again this is something for which I know of no corroboration, outside of Harsnett's letter (and that is less clear than it might be), but the implication seems to be that Hayward was able to nominate Harsnett as his intended licenser: `the Author delivered his pamphlet unto a gentleman in my Lord of London his house who begged your Orator his approbation unto the same'. Had the book simply been delivered to Bancroft's house without comment, it might presumably have been sent to any of the dozen or so licensers working under the bishop, only reaching Harsnett by chance. As it is written, the unnamed `gentleman' made a special point of asking Harsnett (`your Orator' in the sense of petitioner or suppliant) to licence it, which he would surely only have done at Hayward's instigation. And the phrasing `sett to his hand sodenlie as mooved by his friend' also suggest that Harsnett recognised a personal communication behind the fact that the book had come to him. All in all, the circumstances in which the manuscript supposedly reached Harsnett, via a shadowy `gentleman', are suspiciously convenient: they allow the excuse that old acquaintance with the author made Harsnett lax or even negligent, but also preserve his bottom line of defence, that `the Author of this pamphlet . . . neither spake nor conferred with your orator concerning this pamphlett' and `your Orator for ten or twelve years past neither spake with nor saluted the Author of this pamphlett, and so is clear from privitiye with his entendements and overtures in the same'. Here Harsnett voices the key suspicion about his own dealing with Hayward,

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paralleling the unvoiced but strongly probed suspicion about Hayward and Wolfe's dealing with Essex: that there was a conspiracy. This was probably a calculated risk. He was clearly most afraid of being associated with any treason pinned by the authorities on Hayward. If he had to accept responsibility for anything, negligence was far to be preferred over conspiracy to treason. But Harsnett was extremely fortunate to be in a position where he could make that choice. Coke could surely have smelt a rat, had he felt so inclined. There is a similar over-elaboration, not to say fortuitous contrivance, about the two very different poses which Harsnett projects of himself as a reader: on the one hand `a poore divine unacquainted with bookes and arguments of state with consequences of that nature' who believes without question when told that a book is `a cantel of our Englishe chronicles phrased and flourished over onelie to shewe the Author his pretie Witt' and so `never reading . . . more than one page'; on the other hand, someone worldly enough (perhaps with hindsight?) to know that he should have drawn the line at licensing any such work dedicated to Essex, categorical that the document he had licensed had not been so dedicated, and that he had read it just attentively enough to be certain that it contained none of the prefatory material with which it was afterwards published. Again, he contrives to be in a position where he can have his cake and eat it. His decision to base his defence entirely on `unadvised negligence' (but not so unadvised as not to check for prefatory material) kept him preternaturally clear both of any conspiracy prior to licensing and of any collusion following it. In such paranoid times he clearly feared that he would be sacrificed, as Hayward looked like being, to the overriding aim of incriminating Essex. But he also knew how unpredictable the political winds were: today's traitor might be tomorrow's Privy Councillor. I do not mean to imply in any of this that there ever was a conspiracy behind the writing and publication of Hayward's book, much less that Harsnett was party to it, if there was. All we can really be sure of is that, by July 1600, Coke and his political masters were anxious to establish that there had been such conspiracies, preferably ones that could be linked directly to Essex himself. By the same token we can see that Harsnett understood this agenda implicitly and constructed for himself a defence which, at all costs, detached him from any and all conspiracies. I cannot say that he lied on any particulars (much of his testimony, including the role of the unnamed gentleman in the Bancroft household ± possibly Mr. Barker, the registrar of the high commission ± could presumably be checked if Coke were so inclined), but it is entirely

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possible that he would have given a rather different account if he had been consulted, say, a year earlier, before the conditions became anything like so critical. And this does make it difficult to know how much of what he wrote applied to his regular licensing activities, and those of his fellow licensers. In particular, how many texts were licensed unread, on the assurance that they were `a meer rhetorical exornation . . . to shewe the foyle of the Author his witt'. And just how much freedom did an author have to place his work before one licenser rather than another? It is clear that certain licensers took responsibility for special categories of books, such as works of music, while works of theology were always liable to be referred to the Bishop or Archbishop. But beyond that, it is not impossible that authors had, at least, a degree of choice, which would have reinforced the subtle collusive pressures on a system which was more anxious to draw authors within its network of authority than to exclude them from it. On either question, Harsnett's letter must have squared sufficiently with the known practice to have carried conviction. The possibility that authors may have had some say in their choice of licensers brings me back to the point I raised earlier about Harsnett's track record of licensing contentious works (which could have weighed as much with Hayward as their old college association, if he really did seek out Harsnett for his licence). By January 1599, in barely 16 months of not very intensive licensing, Harsnett had already `set his hand' to a number of mildly scandalous works. One of his earliest licences (8 September 1598) had gone to Marston's The Scourge of Villainy and another (15 September 1598) to Edward/Everard Guilpin's Skialethia, both works which were specifically named to be called in and burned in the Bishops' Order of June 1599. Only two days after licensing Hayward's book (11 January 1599) he was involved in licensing a book which the Stationers clearly recognised as controversial, now generally known as Nashes Lenten Stuffe. The Register entry reads: `Entred for [Cuthbert Burby's] copie in full Court holden this daie a booke called the praise of the Redd herringe upon Condicon that he get it lawefully Aucthorised'. Burby then took it to Harsnett, since the entry concludes: `to the whiche copie master Harsnettes hand is sett for th'allowance thereof with the wardens handes' (Arber, 3, p. 124). The clear inference is that the Wardens were not about to `allow' such a work on their own authority, though Burby may have been hoping that they would. In turning to Harsnett for the necessary licence ± assuming he had an option in this ± he was looking for someone prepared to handle an author of some notoriety. Again, that June, the bishops specifically ordered `That all NASSHES books . . . be

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taken wheresoever they be found and that none of [his] bookes bee ever printed hereafter'. When we add Hayward's book to the list, Harsnett's contribution to the list of `allowed' works later summarily banned or the cause of critical review, is quite marked. We must not get this out of proportion, of course. He was also (and more commonly) licensing works as uncontroversial as Francis Meres's Palladis Tamia: Witt's Treasury and Will Kempe's Kempe's Nine Days' Wonder. And he was never nearly as active as some licensers. In the early 1600s, for example, Zacharias Padfield regularly `allowed' anything between a third and a half of all books, at a time when between 110 and 150 were being published each year (McGee, pp. 26±7). Harsnett only `allowed' a total of 61 books in his entire period as a licenser, between August 1598 and November 1605. So it would be wrong to assume that authors saw him as an `easy touch' and regularly called on his services. Nevertheless, his name is associated with an interesting array of borderline contentious cases, and continued to be so even after the trauma of the Hayward affair. For example, three months before Coke's messenger arrived, he gave a licence to Ben Jonson's Every Man Out of His Humour (8 April 1600), although the play had met some sort of censure for its onstage portrayal of the Queen (Dutton, 1991, pp. 136±7), and only three months after his letter to Coke (10 October 1600), he licensed Nashe's satirical play Summers' Last Will and Testament, in spite of the blanket ban on Nashe's books imposed by his superiors the summer before. This perhaps says something about the limited actual effect of the Bishops' Order but probably also reflects the continuing marginal status of plays which (again pace the Bishops' Order) were by no means always recognised as `books'. It is perhaps safest to conclude that Harsnett was by no means an eccentric or lenient censor, but that he was a shrewd and confident judge of what he read, and not afraid to pass works which others might perhaps query ± in the Hayward case, though for very particular reasons, query very forcefully. This would accord well with what emerges from his own writings, though this is no place to consider them in detail. The best known of these, A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, `in its own time and after was recognised as a brilliant work of satire' (Murphy, p. 71; Brownlow, p. 92). A better measure of Harsnett's independence of mind, however, is to be found in the sermon he preached at Paul's Cross, early in his career, on 27 October 1584. It survives in manuscript under the title A Sermon preached by Dr Harsnett Tuchynge universall grace, was based on the text `As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked' (Ezekiel, xxxiii, II), and was an out-and-out attack on the

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Calvinist doctrine of predestination.7 Its tone may be judged from a single sentence: `There is a conceit in the word (beloved) speakes little better of our gracious God, then this: and that is, That God should designe many thousands of soules to Hell before they were, not in eye to their faults, but in his own absolute will and power, and to get him glory in their condemnation'. At a time when the Church of England was dominated by returned Marian exiles, who were Calvinist to a man, and even a figure as revered and respected as Lancelot Andrewes had to be extremely cautious about questions of free will and grace, this was unblushing heresy. Even Whitgift, less zealous than most of his bishops in this regard, could not let it pass without disciplining Harsnett, who recalled many years later (1624) `his sermon at Paules Crosse, of Predestination negativeÂ, unadvisedly preached by him, for which he was checkt by the Lord Archbishopp Whitguifte, and commanded to preach no more of it; and he never did . . .' (Brownlow, p. 45). Even so, he was never allowed to forget that sermon, and probably never recanted from those views, though he became more circumspect about expressing them. Maurice Lee regards Harsnett unequivocally as Arminian (though the term was not current in Elizabeth's reign), an unusual thing for a Jacobean bishop to be (pp. 184±5). Certainly, early in James's reign he was taken into the service of the Earl of Salisbury, who advanced a number of Bancroft's `high church' proteÂgeÂs, and throughout his career he was dogged with charges of Papistry or proto-Papistry (Croft, pp. 773, 791± 2, 795±6). After his death, the puritan zealot, William Prynne, shortly himself to fall foul of the most brutal censorship, made a point of dragging his name into his tirade against the Arminian tendency, AntiArminianisme (2nd Edition, 1630). He printed there `A Copie of a Recantation of certaine Errors, raked out of the Dunghill of Poperie, and Pelagianisme, publiquely made by Master Barret of Kayes College in Cambridge the 10. of May, in this present yeare of our Lord, 1595, in the University Church, called St. Maries in Cambridge: which errors he (together with Mr. Harsnett of Pembrooke Hall) did rashly hold, and maintainers' (pp. 56±71). William Barret was indeed required to read the prescribed recantation `which he did accordingly, though not with that remorse and humility as was expected. Not long after this Palinodie, Master Barret, (to shew that these positions are but a bridge to Popery) departs the University, and gets beyond Sea; where he (as Betius, and some other Arminians since have done) turned a professed Papist' (p. 61). In fact Prynne says no more about Harsnett than to drag him into the title and tar him with the same brush as Barret; he was not made formally to recant and certainly did not become Roman Catholic. On

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the contrary, he remained firmly within the Church of England, becoming successively Bishop of Chichester, Bishop of Norwich, and eventually Archbishop of York (1609, 1618, 1628). This, of course, was precisely what Prynne (who later openly described him as `a professed notorious Arminian well inclined to Popery') found most unforgivable (1644, p. 273). So Harsnett ploughed through a career in the Church, in the teeth of its prevailing orthodoxies. Ironically, by the end of his career, his own `Arminianism' was coming to be the orthodoxy of William Laud and the court of Charles I. But in one further striking instance Harsnett showed himself to be capable of remarkable independence of mind. In the Parliament of 1628, in the events leading up to the grudging royal assent to the Petition of Right (7 June), he stood with the opposition peers ± Bristol, Saye, Arundel and his fellow prelates, Archbishop Abbot and Bishop John Williams ± against Buckingham and the court party (including all the other bishops) in support of the Commons' view of the law and their own privileges. Despite this, however, he was still elevated to the Archdiocese of York in November 1628 ± a remarkable achievement for a man of such independence of mind. It is surely not unreasonable to read that record back into his actions as a licenser of books. There is ample evidence that Harsnett could be a strict disciplinarian when he chose, but it was almost invariably in relation to Church discipline. From his writings against both Puritan and Catholic exorcisms (where he followed Bancroft's lead in ridiculing the pretensions of those outside the state church to special divine powers), through endless wranglings with the people in his diocese of Norwich over his insistence on the proper wearing of vestments, respect for the communion table, and suppression of unlicensed preachers, to a blistering harangue in 1631 against Bishop Davenant of Salisbury for daring to preach on aspects of predestination, in defiance of a royal proclamation, Harsnett repeatedly stood for the primacy of the established church and its practices, and for the rule of law over special pleading. In the case of Davenant, for example, though he would probably not have approved the Calvinist shadings of what the man said, he focused half an hour of vitriol on the Bishop's wilful disobedience to the king, shattering the peace over theological `questions and opinions' which the royal proclamation had brought to the Church: not what the man said, but the unauthorised context within which he said it. Applying this rule to the practice of censorship, it is not unreasonable to suppose that Harsnett would find the satires of Marston, Guilpin and Nashe in highly questionable taste, but functionally acceptable within the collusive framework of authority which he was there to represent.

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Similarly, if indeed he did read Hayward's Life of Henry IV (as I am inclined to suspect he did), he would almost certainly have appreciated its potential application to the contemporary situation, but probably judged (with John Chamberlain) that what he saw did not contain `buggeswords' of a kind that turned a possible reading into a necessary, inescapable one. It was the prefatory matter which provided that for those who were looking for it (though not, as we observed, for John Chamberlain), and John Wolfe's testimony suggests that Harsnett was telling the truth when he said that that had not been part of the document he licensed.8

iii) The afterlife of Hayward and his `Henry IV' It will be apparent, from my brief sketch of Harsnett's career, that the Hayward business was no serious impediment to this advancement.9 Indeed, there is no reason to suppose that it had a material effect on his life at all, once the storm of Coke's inquiry had passed. Perhaps more remarkably, Hayward did not suffer in the long run either; indeed it is not impossible that the book worked to his advantage in the end. He did remain in the Tower until 1603, but once James came to the throne he was released and found (along with many others) that having been associated with Essex, while not in itself a cause for advancement, ceased to be an impediment. It is apparent that he did not waste his time in prison, since his An Answer to the First Part of `A Certaine Conference, Concerning Succession' was entered in the Stationers' Register on 7 April 1603, barely two weeks after James's succession had been declared (Arber, 3, p. 94). This was essentially a response to the scandal-mongering work, probably edited by Robert Parsons, which had alluded to Essex's possible ambitions in relation to the succession. But in it Hayward took the opportunity (denied by the suppression of his `Epistle Apologetical') to explain and justify his Henry IV, claiming `that his book backed the authority of princes and the legitimacy of royal blood, and he was right. He made as clear as he could . . . that Henry's lack of legitimacy had led to infinite trouble' (Levy, p. 262). The real substance of the book, however, was a defence of James's right to the throne and an ultraloyalist assertion of the monarchy as the source of all authority, crowned with an argument in favour of James's plans for a Parliamentary and legal union of England and Scotland: a clear bid for favour from a trained civil lawyer. He reinforced this three years later with A Reporte . . . concerning Supreme Power in Affaires of Religion, upholding the principle that religion

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was an adjunct of state sovereignty, so that James's position as monarch and Supreme Governor the Church of England was in no way anomalous. Curiously ± and this returns me to my main narrative ± Hayward's next publication was almost certainly a reissue of the Life and Reign of King Henry IV. It has long been recognised that a large number of copies of that book have survived, the vast majority of them with the Dedication intact, though we know that it was cut out of half of the original impression. H.R. Plomer addressed this anomaly in 1902, but concluded that the surviving copies were indeed originals. However, in 1934, William A. Jackson established conclusively ± on the evidence of printers' devices and extra-textual ornaments ± that the surviving copies derived, not from one, but from four separate impressions, a few from the original 1599 imprint, but many more from reprints in 1609, again some time after 1620, and finally as late as 1638±39. All of these claim, on the title page, to be by J.H., to have been `Imprinted at London by John Woolfe' (though Jackson established that Wolfe employed Edward Allde to do the actual printing for him), and to have been published in 1599; they all contain the dedication to Essex, the only part of the text explicitly signed by `J Haywarde'. They all contain (A2v) a list of `Faults escaped in the Printing', though one of the major differences between copies from 1609 onwards and the original is that most of these `faults' have been corrected. So, for example, in the most complete collection of these editions, that in the Huntington Library, which has five copies, all purporting to be originals, only one is genuine (STC 12995, the Bridgewater Library copy), one is a 1609 pirated reprint by John Windet (STC 12996), one is a post-1620 reprint by Bernard Alsop (STC 12997: STC speculates 1629) and two are the products of a print-shop in Cow Lane, 1638±39 (STC 1297a).10 The existence of all the `pirated' copies begs several questions, but none more so than that of 1609, since several large-paper copies of that have survived (including those in the British Library and the Archbishop Abbot Collection at Lambeth Palace). Normally large-paper copies were produced for authors to use as presentation copies to friends and people they wanted to impress, and are a most unusual feature of `pirate' editions (that is, editions outside of the normal structure of registration and licensing). This led W.A. Jackson to speculate that Hayward, `desirous of having copies for presentation to those who might assist him in his ambition to become tutor to the Prince of Wales and a member of James's projected Chelsea College, induced Windet to counterfeit the original edition so that he might present copies as ``one of a few remain-

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ing''. Such an explanation is, of course, highly conjectural, but it is difficult otherwise to account for such a phenomenon as a L.P. counterfeit' (p. 374; see also Anon., 1957). If Jackson is right (and, though his speculation is `highly conjectural', it is difficult to think of a better one), the tactic paid off very quickly, since in 1610 Hayward was appointed one of the historiographers of the new Chelsea College. In fact the college never got off the ground, but further preferment followed: Commissary-general of the Dean and Chaplain of St Paul's (1614), a Master in Chancery (1616), a knighthood (1619), and later work in the Court of High Commission, and seats in Parliament, where he always solidly supported the royal prerogative, as the civil lawyers commonly did. Whatever Hayward's original motives in writing the Life and Reign of Henry IV, he finished his days in 1627 as an honoured member of the legal establishment and a firm supporter of the monarch. Once secure, he returned to writing history (The Lives of the 3. Normans, 1613; The Life, and raigne of K. Edward the Sixt, published posthumously 1630; and an abortive attempt at a Life of Queen Elizabeth), all of it entirely uncontentious. Yet the survival of his first history, in its various disguised and pirated forms, suggests that that work retained exceptional interest. Whether this was essentially curiosity value, wanting to possess a work that had been the subject of such scandal, a memento of the most momentous political crisis of Elizabeth's last years, it is impossible to tell ± though that might help to explain why the copies were such exact replicas of the original. Because it is far from clear that the book could not have been openly printed in a new edition by 1609, since other works formerly proscribed for their associations with Essex, notably the Voyage to Cadiz, (excised from the 1599 Haklyut's Voyages) were again allowed to be sold. As W.A. Jackson points out, the copyright of Hayward's book `can be traced without a break until 1639', though the owners of the rights cannot be formally associated with the counterfeit editions: `entered by Wolfe (9 January 1599, ibid., p. 134), transferred by his widow to C. Burby (14 April 1603, ibid., p. 232), acquired without entry by W. Welby . . . . transferred by him to T. Snodham (2 March 1618, ibid., p. 621), by Mistress Surdham to W. Stansby (23 February 1626, Arber, 4, p. 459)' (p. 376 and Note 2). He suggests, which must be right, that all these people would be unlikely to go on paying out their sixpence licence fees in respect of a work that was, for practical purposes, dead. So the logical explanation is that the counterfeiting (at least, most of it) was not outright piracy, but a subterfuge to keep alive the impression that customers were receiving copies of the original imprint.

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If so, there is an ironic appropriateness about the fact that this should have happened to a book associated with John Wolfe, since Wolfe himself had built his career as a printer on the production of surreptitious or counterfeit editions of foreign-language texts ± mainly Italian or Spanish works, designed to give the impression that they had been printed in those countries. There was nothing illegal about this, nor was it strictly a covert process. The members of the Stationers' Company certainly knew it was going on from 1581 onwards, and resented his success because Wolfe was not at the time a member; but the law did not, at that time, restrict foreign language books to their monopoly. In fact one of the provisions of the 1586 Star Chamber decree, for which they had lobbied, was to bring such works within their privileged circle, requiring a licensed entry in their Register. By then Wolfe was one of their number, a poacher turned gamekeeper, and as jealous of their privileges as any other member. The principle of surreptitious printing did not escape the attention of the authorities, however, since no less a person than Lord Burghley (who had himself been a press licenser under Edward VI) engaged in it himself; he was responsible for several (anonymous) propaganda tracts in the 1580s, and at the height of the Armada crisis produced the Copy of a Letter to Don Bernadin de Mendoza (1588), foreign language versions of which were, in the sense I have outlined, surreptitious (a ploy to convince foreigners of their authenticity!). And John Wolfe was one of those employed in this entirely loyal counterfeiting (Woodfield. esp. Chapters 2 and 4). So it is highly unlikely that the counterfeiting of Hayward's book, under Wolfe's supposed imprint, was an attempt to circumvent official restraints. The government and the self-interested members of the Stationers' Company were equally alert to any such possibility. The `afterlife' of the Wolfe/Allde text of Hayward's book was surely a matter of commercial expediency (not to say sharp practice), rather than of anything more sinister. As I observed early in this essay, the whole system of licensing which Harsnett briefly represented was driven as much by the business interests of the Stationers' Company as it was by any repressive designs on the part of the government, whose chief concern was to keep the whole process of public comment within a suitable framework of authority. Only when a truly exceptional crisis struck, such as the Essex affair, or when that authority was actually flouted (a key issue in the `Martin Marprelate' scandal, for example), were the claws that underwrote that authority revealed, and normal accommodations ruthlessly forgotten in a determination that examples should be made. As Annabel Patterson observes:

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. . . there is a whole range of publishing in England that can better be accounted for by assuming some degree of co-operation and understanding on the part of the authorities themselves, something that goes beyond the recognition that unenforceable laws were better than none, that the occasional imprisonment, however arbitrary, had an exemplary force. Rather, there were conventions that both sides accepted as to how far a writer could go in explicit address to the contentious issues of his day, how he could encode his opinions so that nobody would be required to make an example of him. (1984, p. 11) What I have tried to describe here are the circumstances which `required' the authorities to make an example of Hayward, to insist that the `buggeswords' which took the text beyond acceptable limits were actually there (though John Chamberlain had not been able to find them), once the normal conditions which underwrote these conventions were breached. And yet this book, that was briefly the subject of such intense scrutiny and mass burning, could shortly thereafter reappear in the shelves of the booksellers with only a fig-leaf of disguise. There is an ironic coda to this tale. In 1639 a publisher named William Sheares finally abandoned that disguise, and produced a variant of the 1638±39 counterfeit, with a cancel title-page, which explicitly announces that `The History of the Life and Raigne of Henry the Fourth' was `written by Sir John Hayward Knight, Doctor of Law' and `Printed for William Sheares . . . MDCXXXIX' (though the end-sheet retains the subterfuge that it is `Printed by John Wolfe ... 1599'). And Sheares reprinted it again openly, in 1642, in conjunction with Sir Robert Cotton's History of the Life of Henry III (STC 12997a.5 and STC H1232 respectively). The dates here are all-important since, as W.A. Jackson says: `it was more likely intended to sell as a political pamphlet than an historical one' (p. 375). That is, a text which had once been read, whatever its author's intention, as a call for the deposition of Queen Elizabeth was now being revived as a call for the deposition of King Charles, while the country lurched on the edge of Civil War. Or perhaps it was to be read, as Hayward himself had protested in An Answer to the First Part of `A Certain Conference, Concerning Succession' as an endorsement of royal authority, a warning against challenging legitimate monarchy? There could be no finer testimony to the ultimate futility of censorship.

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Preface: Buggeswords and Analogical Reading 1 Quoted from the text of 1 Troublesome Raigne in Bullough, 1957±75, IV, lines 1685±6. 2 See the letter from Ambassador de la Broderie to the Marquis de Sillery, reproduced in Chapman, p. 276. 3 Hariot's notes are printed in Henry Stevens, Life of Thomas Hariot, rptd New York, 1972, p. 135. 4 Some of the most notorious attempts to find topical meaning have been attached to the plays of John Lyly: see Dutton, 1991, pp. 63±5; also Albright, 1927a.

1 The Regulation and Censorship of Early Modern Drama 1 Only in the 1599 quarto text; most of his role is redistributed among other characters in the 1623 folio. 2 The precise social status of the actors was always a moot point in their anomalous profession. Shakespeare himself professed to be a gentleman, untainted by `mechanical' trade or labour. Many of his fellows, however, were members of trade guilds which had no bearing on their theatrical work but gave them secure standing as citizens of London; John Heminge, for example, was a grocer, and Robert Armin a goldsmith. Similarly, Ben Jonson retained his formal status as a bricklayer long after he plied that trade. 3 Performances were normally also suspended for much of Lent, though in later years dispensations could be bought from the Master of the Revels (Herbert, p. 213). Playing was also stopped when the weekly plague bills exceeded a given number ± the years of 1593±94, 1603 and 1608±9 were particularly bad (Barroll, 1991a). There is evidence the Privy Council and others sometimes exploited this excuse for other reasons, even when plague deaths did not warrant it (Freedman). 4 Steven Mullaney's cultural materialist study, The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England (1988) argues that `[w]hen popular drama moved out into the Liberties, it . . . converted the moral license and ambivalence of the Liberties to its own ends, translating its own cultural situation into a liberty that was at once moral, ideological and topological' (p. ix). The precise legal status of the liberties was indeed muddy: the writ of the Sheriff of London did not run there, for example. But in respect of the theatres built there it is clear that they were always subject to the authority of the relevant county magistrates and of the Privy Council. Progressively the authority of the Privy Council would be vested, for most practical purposes, in the Master of the Revels. The argument that the theatres enjoyed a special `liberty' because of where they were situated therefore seems to me questionable: for most purposes they were not subject to interference from the City authorities, but this 192

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Notes

5 6

7

8

9 10 11

12

did not remove them from the wider structures of control that governed early modern England. These restrictions only applied to professional players who would perform in public. The gentry might still retain household servants who would sometimes perform as entertainers. Augustine Phillips, the actor, was questioned about the performance and insisted that the play (probably Shakespeare's) was an old one ± and so, probably, duly licensed. The Chamberlain's Men received no penalty and performed at court within the month, on the eve of Essex's execution. The actors were accused of adding unlicensed material to the `allowed' text of A Game at Chess, but denied it; they were, however, found guilty of doing it to Jonson's The Magnetic Lady (Butler, 1992). See also Chapter 3 `Obscenity and Profanity'. The Queen's Men lost their special status at court after the deaths of their key promoters, the Earl of Leicester and Sir Francis Walsingham, though they continued in their other key role as a touring company with a repertoire that clearly advanced the government's views (McMillin and MacLean). It is unclear whether the scandalous Isle of Dogs (1597), written by Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson, and performed by Pembroke's Men at the Swan, had a bearing on the new restrictions. The fact that Tilney was apparently not involved ± they seem to have been licensed by the Surrey justices ± reinforced the case for making him the key figure in the new provisions. The much smaller Paul's Boys were in decline and disappeared around 1606. See Preface, pp. xvi±xvii. Only people of substance could expect to be protected from malicious `personation'. We know that Chapman's lost The Old Joiner of Aldgate (Paul's Boys, 1603) shadowed real events and that key participants saw `themselves' on stage, though they chose not to complain. Anne Elsden complained about the portrayal of herself in The Late Murder in the White Chapel, or Keepe the Widow Waking (1624), by Dekker, Rowley, Ford and Webster, and paid Herbert's deputy to prevent its performance, but he did nothing (Dutton, 1991, pp.129±32). In arguing that the leading companies were increasingly identified with the court I do not suggest either that the court was itself a monolithic entity, or that the actors and their dramatists readily endorsed (for example) Stuart absolutist government. Rather that the economic and social dependence of the companies on the court affected their theatrical styles and strategies. Within this, however ± as Massinger's The King and the Subject, written for the King's Men themselves, amply demonstrates ± there remained room for a considerable range of political views (Butler, 1984).

2 Licensed Fools: the 1598 Watershed 1 There is evidence that inn-yard theatres within the City continued to be used after 1596. But no company was able to use one as a regular base, and that is the critical distinction here.

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Notes 193

2 Glynne Wickham (1969) supposes that it was an elaborate bluff, that the Privy Council were in effect challenging the City Council to buy out the owners of the theatres while playing was suspended (knowing that they would not be able to afford it). But this is undercut by the fact that the orders were issued to the relevant Surrey and Middlesex magistrates, not to the Lord Mayor. There is nothing in them to suggest that the magistrates were not supposed to carry out the destruction of the theatres forthwith. 3 This would mean it took just about six months to build, work having started on 17 January. This is comparable with The Globe, which in many respects it copied; that was reported to be newly built about five months after The Theatre was dismantled, though it was nine months (September 1599) before we can be sure it was ready for use, when Thomas Platter saw Julius Caesar there. 4 The major exception to this proposition is what happened to the Children of the Chapel, who became the Children of the Queen's Revels, were taken out of Tilney's control, and given their own licenser by Queen Anne, Samuel Daniel. See below. 5 See p. 192, Note 4. 6 As, for example, in Polonius's reminiscence of playing Julius Caesar (3.2.103± 4); Hamlet's advice to the actors on acting (3.2.1±45) probably carried quite specific barbs for its original audience. 7 Thersites' `privileged' position in Troilus and Cressida has few of these metadramatic resonances, which must fuel the common suspicion that it was not (at least as we have it) written for the public theatre. His freedom to speak is only one among several that are carefully nuanced. Agamemnon tells Aeneas to `Speak frankly as the wind' (1.3.253), while Ulysses begs his fellows `Give pardon to my speech' (1.3.357), and Diomedes has to ask his enemies: `Let me be privileged by my place and message / To be a speaker free' (4.4.130±1). The most resonant moment is perhaps where Cressida complains to Diomedes `One cannot speak a word / But it straight starts you' and he replies `I do not like this fooling' (5.2.103±4), but it is far from certain that theatrical `fooling' is implied here, though Thersites is one of those watching this scene. 8 See Clegg, 1997a, pp. 8±11, on the status of cum privilegio licences. 9 There are parallels here with Autolycus in The Winter's Tale, not strictly a licensed fool but an analogous Armin role. He introduces himself as having `serv'd Prince Florizel, and in my time wore three-pile' (4.3.13±14) ± the rich velvet of a royal servant, though whether as a player or not is never specified. 10 On theatre in the court of Queen Anne, see Barroll, 1991b, and Lewalski. 11 On The Spanish Viceroy, see pp. 13, 49±50.

3 Obscenity and Profanity: Sir Henry Herbert's Problems with the Players and Archbishop Laud, 1632±34 1 Tilney was Master of the Revels from 1579±1610, Buc from 1610±22. Sir John Astley succeeded Buc, but sold the post to Sir Henry Herbert in 1623: Dutton, 1990; Bawcutt, 1992.

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194 Notes

2 A similar question about who should be held responsible for `personation' became central to the enquiry about A Game at Chess. See below, pp. 137, 144±7. 3 See Acknowledgements and Preface, pp. xvi±xvii. 4 Unfortunately The Widow's Prize is not a play Finkelpearl considers in detail. 5 See the entry on Henrietta Maria in the DNB, I, pp. 937±8. 6 It is intriguing that the first play to be the subject of this understanding between Herbert and the King's Men was another Fletcher piece. Although Philip Finkelpearl regards The Loyal Subject as `one of Fletcher's weaker efforts' he argues that it is his `response, characteristically poised and sceptical, to his sovereign's conception of how a loyal subject should act' (1990, pp. 219, 223). 7 Two nights earlier (26 November) the King's Men had given The Taming of the Shrew (the precursor of Fletcher's play) at court in what was evidently a planned double-bill. This was only `Likt' (Herbert, p. 185). One wonders if Shakespeare's play had acquired any wider resonances, like Fletcher's. The Women's Prize was very popular again in the early years of the Restoration, both in the theatre and at court. Although this was clearly connected with the new possibilities associated with women on stage, the play's sexual politics perhaps also played a part (Sprague, pp. 8ff ).

4

Marlowe: Censorship and Construction

1 The passage from Kind-Heart's Dream is quoted from Schoenbaum, 1987, p. 154. That from the Epistle to Volpone is in Jonson, 1925±52, 4, p. 16. 2 References to Marlowe's works and to the Baines deposition (Appendix, pp. 511±14) are normally to the Everyman Marlowe: Complete Plays and Poems, ed. E.D. Pendry and J.C. Maxwell (1976), which conveniently reproduces the dramatic texts, the poems and ancillary materials. The exception is to the two texts of Dr Faustus, where I refer to the Revels Plays Dr Faustus, ed. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen (1993). 3 Bevington and Rasmussen also argue for a second hand in the writing of Dr Faustus, but they do so from textual and compositorial evidence in the state of the 1604 A text and from common playhouse practice, rather than from an assumption that stage comedy was `beneath' Marlowe (Marlowe, 1993, pp. 70±2). 4 I am thinking here of `patronage' in the wide sense of a Renaissance `psychological system', as suggested by Robert C. Evans (1987), p. 29. 5 Early copies, such as those in the Bodleian and Folger Libraries, read `factious'. But the careful change to `facetious', which required a substitution of `that' for `which' to make space, indicates that this is what Chettle intended (Schoenbaum, 1987, p. 155 and note). 6 Janet Clare is unusual in pressing the case for Tilney being the censor of Richard II, rather than anyone associated with its printing. She argues that the abdication scene, which was the passage cut in the 1597 text, `invited strong reaction from the Master of the Revels' (Clare, pp. 47±51; see also pp. 68±70). She makes much of the text not being authorised by an ecclestiastical licenser; it was entered in the Stationers' Register solely on the authority of the company wardens. This was strictly improper but far from uncommon, especially in cases of ballads, chap-books and other lesser items, including plays. One

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Notes 195

requirement of the 1599 Bishops' Ban was that all plays should be properly licensed, which indirectly points to the number that were not: see below, pp. 167±8. But to suppose that this meant that no control was exercised is to underplay the extent to which the Stationers' Company itself was implicated in the whole process of containment. Precisely who censored these texts and when cannot be established. Most people have assumed that censorship for print rather than for performance was the issue, keeping Shakespeare himself at arms length and leaving open the possibility that what he wrote was uncontroversial when he wrote it (and so in intention), and only became suspect in the light of later developments. 7 Tilney probably only licensed the plays of companies with a realistic prospect of performing at court. In fact all of Marlowe's plays were performed by such companies: Dido Queen of Carthage, the Children of the Chapel Royal; 1&2 Tamburlaine, Dr Faustus, The Massacre at Paris and (latterly) The Jew of Malta, the Lord Admiral's Men (after earlier performances by Strange's Men and Sussex's Men); Edward II, Pembroke's Men. All of these companies performed on occasion at court, the Lord Admiral's Men quite regularly in the 1590s, though there is no actual record of a court performance of a Marlowe play. This is another omission which it would be unwise to make too much of: there are numerous recorded occasions when they performed but we don't know what played. 8 Bushell conveyed his rights in the play to John Wright on 3 September 1610, who was responsible for all subsequent editions of the play including the 1616 version now known as the `B text', which seems to have been authorised on the strength of the original licence. See Dutton 1991 (pp. 148±50) on Buc's acquisition of authority to license plays for the press. 9 See above pp. 4, 18, 193 note 1, on the supposed 1596 end (Chambers, 4, p. 360) to playing in inn-yard theatres.

5 Shakespeare: the Birth of the Author 1 Titus Andronicus (1594); Richard II (1597); Love's Labour's Lost (1598); I Henry IV (1598); Romeo and Juliet (1599); A Midsummer Night's Dream (1600); 2 Henry IV (1600); The Merchant of Venice (1600); Much Ado About Nothing (1600); Hamlet (1604); King Lear (1608); Troilus and Cressida (1609) and Othello (1622), while Richard III (1597) is not far behind the standard of these twelve. Dates are those of publication. I omit palpably unsatisfactory texts such as the 1600 Henry V and 1603 Hamlet from this list, as well as the problematic Pericles (1609). 2 See, for example, Williams, 1985, pp. 589±90; Bowers, 1987, p. 414. The widely-held assumption that the 1609 text of the sonnets was not sanctioned by Shakespeare, and was indeed unauthorised, has been cogently challenged: see Duncan-Jones, 1983. 3 Prolonged plague and the Civil War closure of the theatres are most often cited as occasioning the sale of playbooks the actors would otherwise have preferred to retain. 4 Middleton, 1975, p. xxi and Note 2. See also Schoenbaum, 1987, p. 159; Barroll, 1991a, pp. 16±17.

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196 Notes

5 On tensions between actual and potential licensers, see Dutton, 1991, pp. 47±9, 115±16, 148±55. 6 The Lord Admiral's Men did finally in 1602 come to an arrangement with Henry Chettle (their most prolific writer for some time). But since that arrangement was directly with the company, rather than their financier, we know nothing of the details from Henslowe. 7 See Howard-Hill, 1995, and especially Chapter 6, `The Bridgewater Manuscript and the Evolution of the Text', for a detailed account of the production of the manuscripts of the play ± an account that supposes many more copies than have actually survived. 8 The figures are based on Carson, pp. 82±4. The one manuscript play would be Munday's John a Kent and John a Cumber, but only if that is a version of what Henslowe refers to as The Wise Man of West Chester. 9 Alfred Hart computed that the average length of a Globe play c. 1594±1603 (omitting Jonson and Shakespeare) was 2494 lines (1932). 10 Virgil K. Whitaker, `Note on the Text' in Shakespeare, 1969, p. 979. 11 See Eccles, p. 462. There is no reason to suppose that Segar would have been lax or unaware of the rules because his position was only that of a deputy; he was a herald and writer, a man of intelligence and integrity, and more a friend of Buc's than his subordinate. Buc was seriously ill throughout 1608 and 1609 and Segar was holding the fort for him, and had been doing so for several months before he licensed Troilus and Cressida. 12 See Nelson, 1998. My comments on Henry V derive from a paper presented at the World Shakespeare Congress (Los Angeles, 12 April 1996) and private conversation with Alan Nelson. 13 Quoted from Hamlet (1982), ed. Harold Jenkins, p. 573; Jenkins cites Harvey's Marginalia (1913), pp. 232±3.

6 Jonson: the Epistle to Volpone 1 Jonson texts: see A Note on Texts, p. viii. The Epistle to Volpone is in vol. 4 of Jonson, 1925±52, pp. 16±21; references (Epistle) will normally be to the linenumbering, cited within the text. It will sometimes be necessary to refer to the critical apparatus to recover quarto readings. 2 The letter to the Earl of Salisbury is quoted from the Revels Plays Eastward Ho, edited by R.W. Van Fossen (1979), Appendix 2, 218±25, pp. 220±1. References to Jonson's other letters (and Chapman's) over the Eastward Ho affair are to these versions (modernised), cited by page number within the text. 3 See Chapman's second letter to him, ed. cit., p. 219. 4 See Bradley and Adams, Index pp. 456±7, for a collection of Dryden's references to Jonson. He could be very positive, as in `I prefer the Silent Woman before all other plays, I think justly, as I do its author, in judgment, above all other poets' (p. 346); but he is best remembered for putting him in Shakespeare's critical shade: `I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakespeare the greater wit . . . I admire him, but I love Shakespeare' (p. 344). His dismissal of Jonson's verses to the memory of Shakespeare as `an insolent, sparing, and invidious panegyric' (p. 442) and of his last plays as `but his dotages' (p. 343) had a serious long-term effect on his reputation.

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Notes 197

198 Notes

7 Middleton: the Censorships of A Game at Chess 1 Letter of John Holles, Lord Haughton, to the Earl of Somerset, Wednesday 11 August 1624; quoted from T.R. Howard-Hill's Revels edition of A Game at Chess (1993), Appendix I, `Documents Relating to A Game at Chess', 192±213, p. 199. All references to the play will be to this edition, unless otherwise specified. All contemporary documents relating to the play will be hereafter cited parenthetically as Chess. On Holles's letter, see Howard- Hill (1991b) and Braunmuller (1990). On the question of a `retrayt', Holles is presumably thinking of the kind of shelter apparently accorded Chapman by the Duke of Lennox during the storm over his Byron plays; see John Margeson (ed.), George Chapman: The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Byron, Revels Plays (1988), p. 11 and Appendix IIb. 2 George Lowe to Sir Arthur Ingram, 7 August 1624; John Woolley to William Trumbull, 11 August 1624; Sir Francis Nethersole to Sir Dudley Carleton, 14 August 1624 (Chess, pp. 193, 198, 202 respectively). 3 John Woolley to William Trumbull, 20 August 1624 (Chess, p. 203). 4 Sir Edward Conway to the Privy Council, 12 August 1624 (Chess, p. 200). 5 Privy Council to Sir Edward Conway, 21 August 1624 (Chess, pp. 204±5). 6 On Pembroke as Herbert's sponsor, see Dutton, 1990, but also Bawcutt, 1992. 7 Margot Heinemann refused to accept that matters could be reduced to the tactical manoeuvrings of self-interested factions. `Some factions, such as those of the Earls of Pembroke and Southampton, were consistent for many years in their support of a ``forward'' foreign policy and some did represent consistent ideological stances and attract supporters accordingly' (1993, p. 238). 8 For a detailed account of the activities of the Spanish Ambassadors in the first half of 1624, see Ruigh, pp. 257±302. 9 Cotton's paper was not published until after his death, when it was the first item in Cottoni Posthuma (London, 1651). 10 The text of Aston's `memorial' is actually endorsed `5 August 1624', more than three weeks before he actually delivered it and the day of the play's first performance. 11 We have no record of when this `restraint' was issued, though it may well have been during the controversy surrounding Chapman's Byron plays (1607±8). 12 Howard-Hill's review of the same territory reaches a very different conclusion: `I cannot detect in the official correspondence much enthusiasm to handle the matter' (1995, p. 104). But he overlooks James's initial criticism of the Privy Councillors in London, and that they (either deliberately or otherwise) did not do what he asked of them; he also ignores the fact that Pembroke's letter (which I agree represents his intervention to alleviate the lot of the actors) keeps the issue of `the originall roote of this offence' alive.

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5 Edward Howard's `Second Prologue' to The Women's Conquest is quoted from Jonson, 1925±52, 11, p. 532. 6 Rymer, preface to Rapin's Reflections on Aristotle's Treatise of Poesie, quoted in Craig, 1990, p. 331. Collier's A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage is quoted from Jonson, 1925±52, 11, p. 551.

Notes 199

1 Schoenbaum, 1988, insists that we do not know for certain that the play performed was Shakespeare's, though it is likely; nor can we be sure that it was censored prior to its publications in 1597 (see also Dutton, 1991, pp. 117±27). To that extent my opening sentence sacrifices accuracy to concision. 2 Abstracts of the questions prepared for Hayward by both Popham and Coke, and of his replies, are given in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series . . . 1598±1601, ed. Mary A. E. Green, pp. 404±45, 449, 539±40. All the state papers relating to the case are calendared in this volume, hereafter cited as CSPD. Fuller versions of Coke's questions are reproduced in Dowling. 3 See the comments on Zacharias Padfield, below. 4 A striking exception is Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Ireland and Scotland (2d Edition, 1587), which the Privy Council `called in' and censored. See Dasent, 14 (1586±87), pp. 311±12; Patterson, 1994; Clegg, 1997a, pp. 138± 69. 5 There is an intriguing parallel here with Sir Henry Savile's translations of Tacitus's Histories, first published in 1591, but issued in 1604 with a preface signed `AB'. Ben Jonson told Drummond that `Essex wrote that epistle or preface before the translation of the last part of Tacitus, which is AB' (Conversations 368±9). If Jonson is right, that Epistle must have existed for some time in manuscript before it was published. There are no direct links here with Hayward, though his `politic' style of history was certainly a product of the vogue for Tacitus, of which Savile's translation was symptomatic and which was certainly associated with authors close to the Essex circle (Womersley). The essential point is a climate of rumour and suspicion, in which the possibility that Essex might indulge in clandestine historical `pointings' was the stuff of private gossip. In view of this evidence of `the provocative semantics of the pretext' it is odd that it was not until the Printing Act of 1662 that all `Titles, Epistles, Prefaces, Poems, Preambles, Introductions, Tables, Dedications' were formally required to be licensed along with the main body of the text (Patterson, 1984, p. 48). 6 Cyndia Clegg (1997b) has convincingly argued that the censorship of Shakespeare's Richard II relates to the Parliamentary sanctioning of the deposition of Richard rather than to the fact of deposition itself. The processes by which succession was to be effected and legitimated were particularly sensitive matters. 7 One MS is in Cambridge University Library, MS. Ff. 5.25 (ff. 116±30). Quotations are from the version printed in Richard Stuart [or Steward], Three Sermons, 2nd edition, 1658. 8 When Harsnett issued his Discovery of the Fraudulent Practices of one John Darrel, late in 1599, John Wolfe was his publisher. Inventive minds may want to suppose an element of collusion in their later testimonies. But Wolfe was, after all, official printer to the City of London, one of the busiest publishers, and an entirely logical choice for Harsnett. I am not inclined to invent unnecessary conspiracies.

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8 Buggeswords: the Case of Sir John Hayward's Life of Henry IV

9 Most of what I say about Harsnett is based on Brownlow (1993), which I first encountered in his doctoral dissertation (University of Birmingham, 1963). The book is a complete reworking of that remarkable material. 10 See Jackson, 1934. The Short-Title Catalogue credits the last reprint to Marmaduke Parsons, though he used devices employed by a number of earlier printers in the same premises, and ascription depends upon precise dating. There is also one other reprint, made by George Ellde between 1604 and 1610, which was not known to William Jackson. Only one copy is known (STC 12995.5), at University College, London.

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200 Notes

Adams, Joseph Quincy. 1917. ed. The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert. New Haven: Yale University Press. Akrigg, G.P.V. 1963. Jacobean Pageant. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Albright, Evelyn M. 1927a. Dramatic Publication in England, 1580±1640. New York: D.C. Heath. Reprinted 1971. ÐÐ 1927b. `Shakespeare's Richard II and the Essex Conspiracy'. PMLA 42: 686±720. ÐÐ 1931. `Shakespeare's Richard II, Hayward's History of Henry IV, and the Essex Conspiracy'. PMLA 46: 694±719. Anon. 1957. `Sir John Hayward'. Notes and Queries 202: 288±90. Arber, Edward. 1875±94. ed. A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of the Stationers of London 1554±1640, 5 vols. London: Privately Printed. Archer, John. 1993. Sovereignty and Intelligence: Spying and Court Culture in English Renaissance Writing. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ashton, Robert. `Popular Entertainment and Social Control in Later Elizabethan and Early Stuart England.' London Journal 9 (1983): 1±11. Barroll, Leeds. 1988. `A New History for Shakespeare and His Time.' Shakespeare Quarterly 39: 441±64. ÐÐ 1991a. Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare's Theater: The Stuart Years. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ÐÐ 1991b. `The Court of the First Stuart Queen'. In The Mental World of the Jacobean Court, ed. Linda Levy Peck, pp. 191±208. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bawcutt, N.W. 1992. `Evidence and Conjecture in Literary Scholarship: The Case of Sir John Astley Reconsidered.' English Literary Renaissance 22: 333±46. ÐÐ 1996. The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama: The Records of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels 1623±73. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Beaumont, Francis, and John Fletcher. 1905±12. The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. 10 vols. ed. Arnold Glover and A.R. Waller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beier, A.L. 1986. Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England, 1560±1641. London: Methuen. Benjamin, Edwin B. 1957. `Sir John Hayward and Tacitus'. RES n.s. 8: 275±76. Bentley, G.E., ed. 1968. The Seventeenth Century Stage. Chicago: Chicago University Press. ÐÐ 1971. The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare's Time, 1590±1642. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bergeron, David M. 1991. Royal Family, Royal Lovers. Columbia, Mo: University of Missouri Press. Berry, Herbert. 1986. The Boar's Head Playhouse. Associated University Presses: London and Toronto.

201

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Plays are listed under their author(s), where known. Only those of particular significance in the context of this study are separately cross-referenced by title. Abuses of Players, Act to Restrain (1606) 10, 48, 87±8, 157 actors, regulations governing xx, 5, 8, 10, 16±40 Acuna, Diego Sarmiento de, Conde de Gondomar, Spanish Ambassador 12, 136 ff Adams, John, clown 64 Adams, Joseph Quincy ix, 41±2 Admiral's Men 5, 8, 18, 19, 22 ff, 29 ff, 71, 95, 197; become Prince Henry's Men 9 Albright, E.M. 91, 94 Alleyn, Edward 84 Anne of Denmark, consort of King James 10, 150, 194 Arber, Edward 23, 163 Aretino, Pietro 52 ff, 155, 158 Armin, Robert, actor 34 ff, 192 Arminianism xvi, 47 ff, 185 ff Astley (Ashley), Sir John (served as Master of the Revels 1622±23) ix, 5, 13, 88, 93, 131; sells office to Sir Henry Herbert 11, 45; Lord Chamberlain's warrant 11; and Osmond, the Great Turk (Carlell) 13; and William, Earl of Pembroke 13±14 Aston, Sir Walter, British Ambassador to Spain 141 Bacon, Francis, Viscount St Albans 166, 171, 176 Baines, Richard 62±3, 65±6, 68, 113 Ball, The, see under Shirley, James Bancroft, Richard, Bishop of London 47, 163, 166, 179 ff Barroll, Leeds xv, 7, 90, 100, 173, 192 Bawcutt, N.W. x±xi, 11, 41 ff, 55±9 Beard, Thomas 63±4

Beaumont, Francis x, 100 ff; (with Fletcher) The Scornful Lady 93; A King and No King 100 Beeston, Christopher 46, 146 Beier, A.L. 69 Believe as You List, see under Massinger, Philip Benfeilde, Robert, actor 49 Bentley, Gerald Eades ix, 72±3, 91, 95 Berry, Herbert 22 Bevington, David 195 Bird, William 71, 83, 87 Biron, Charles Duc de, Marshal of France xiv, see also Byron plays,

under Chapman, George

Bishop's Ban (on verse satires and printed histories, 1599) 53, 167 ff, 184, 196 `Blackfriars boys' 9±10, 39, 93±4, 194 Blackfriars, Children of the, see `Blackfriars boys' Blackfriars Theatre (second) 9, 18±19, 26, 32, 97 Blount, Charles, Lord Mountjoy, Earl of Devonshire xiii, 105, 171 Blount, Edward 63±4, 65±6, 68 Boar's Head Inn (theatre) 9, 22 ff Boose, Linda 52 ff Brady, Jennifer 128±9 Breton, Nicholas 65 Bristol, 1st Earl of, see Digby, Sir John Broderie, de la, French Ambassador xiv Brome, Richard 91 ff, 130 Brooke, Ralph, York Herald 106 Brooke, Sir William, 7th Lord Cobham, Lord Chamberlain (1596±97) 18 ff, 82 Brownlow, Frank W. 180, 200 Bruno, Giordano 82±3

211

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Index

Buc (Buck), Sir George (Master of the Revels, 1610±22) ix, 6, 10 ff, 41, 57, 78, 93, 164±5; licenses plays for the press 10, 104, 168; madness of 11, 104 and The Second Maiden's Tragedy (Middleton) 10, 54, 71; and Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt (Fletcher, Massinger) xvi±xvii, 11, 54 buggeswords xii±xiii Burbage, Richard 97±8 Burghley, 1st Lord, see Cecil, Sir William Burt, Richard A. xi Butler, Martin 44 ff, 193 Byron, see under Chapman, George Carey, George, 2 nd Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain (1597±1603) 8, 18, 19 ff Carey, Henry, 1st Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain (1585±96) 18, 76 Carlell, Lodowick 13 Carleton, Sir Dudley ix, xii, 165 Catesby, Robert 119 Cecil, Sir Robert, Earl of Salisbury xiii±xiv, 19, 25, 117 ff, 121, 127, 166, 169, 175, 176 Cecil, Sir William, Lord Burghley 74 Chamberlain, John ix, xii, 165 ff Chamberlain's Men 8, 18, 22 ff, 93, 94 ff; become King's Men 9 Chambers, Sir E.K. ix, 5, 23, 32, 72, 91±2, 97 Chapel Royal, Children of the Queen's (boy company) 5, 9, 22 ff; become Children of the Queen's Revels (1604) 9, see `Blackfriars Boys' Chapman, George 69, 117; All Fools 32; Byron (The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron) xi, xiv±xv, xvii±xviii, 10, 39; The Old Joiner of AIdgate 193; (with Jonson, Marston) Eastward Ho, see under Jonson, Ben Charles I, King of England xix, 12, 14, 47, 59±61, 133 ff, 186, 191; and Sir Henry Herbert 11±12, 14, 138 Chettle, Henry 147; Hoffman 38; Kind Heart's Dream 62, 67±9, 107 ff,

195; (with Dekker) King Sebastian 147 Clare, Janet x, 41, 82 ff, 87±8, 195 Clegg, Cyndia Susan xi, 8, 53, 163, 167, 199 closing of the theatres (1642) 1, 15 Cobham, 7th Lord, see Brooke, Sir William Cocke, John `Character of a Common Player' 39±40, 80±1 Coke, Sir Edward, Attorney General 162 ff, 170 ff, 177 ff Commission of Censorship, see Tilney, Edmond Condell, Henry, actor 98, 106 ff Conway, Sir Edward 134, 143 ff Cotton, Sir Robert 140±1, 191, 198 Council, Privy xiii±xiv, 4 ff, 16 ff, 62, 65±6, 74±6, 78, 84±5, 112, 134 ff, 140, 143 ff, 166±8 Crane, Ralph, scrivener 100, 155±61 Cranfield, Lionel, Earl of Middlesex 150 ff Cross Keys, innyard theatre 4, 76 Curtain, The (theatre) 3, 18, 26, 92 Daniel, Samuel 69, 110; licenser of Children of the Queen's Revels xiii, 9±10, 39, 93± 4; Philotas xiii±xiv, xvii, 39 Davenant, Sir William, author of The Wits 10±11, 13, 42, 58±9 Dawes, Robert, actor 97 Day, John 69; The Isle of Gulls 10, 39 Dekker, Thomas Match Me in London 93; Old Fortunatus 30 ff; Satiromastix 25, 38, 94, 130; The Shoemaker's Holiday 28 ff; (with Chettle) King Sebastian 147; (with W. Rowley, Ford and Webster) The Late Murder in the White Chapel, or Keepe the Widow Waking 93 Derby, 5th Earl of, see Stanley, Ferdinando, Lord Strange Derby, 6th Earl of, see Stanley, William Derby's (6th Earl's) Men 9, 22 ff Dethick, Sir William, Garter King of Arms 106

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212 Index

Index 213 Foxon, David 51 Frederick, Elector Palatine (the Palsgrave), later King of Bohemia xv Freedman, Barbara 23, 192 Frizer, Ingram 66

East India Company 56 Eastward Ho (by Jonson, Chapman and Marston), see under Jonson, Ben Eco, Umberto 128 Edwards, Philip 102 Elizabeth I, Queen of England xix, 2, 6, 7, 27, 30±1, 47, 60±1, 71±2, 81, 168, 170, 174 ff, 191 Elsden, Anne 193 Elsky, Martin 126 Empson, Sir William 70±8 Essex, 2 nd Earl of, see Devereux, Robert Evans, Robert C. 195

Game at Chess A, see under Middleton, Thomas Gascoigne, George, author of A Hundreth of Sundrie Flowers 53 ff Gildersleeve, Virginia Crocheron ix±x, 54 Gill, Roma 64 Globe, The (theatre) 8, 21 ff, 37, 97, 103, 134, 194 Goldberg, Jonathan 126 Gondomar, Conde de, see Acuna, Diego Sarmiento de Gorboduc, see under Sackville, Thomas Greenblatt, Stephen 64 Greene, Robert 96; A Groatsworth of Wit, Bought with a Million of Repentance 67± 9, 107±8 Greg, Sir W.W. 109 Greville, Fulke, author of Antony and Cleopatra xiii, xvii Guilpin, Everard, satirist 183, 186 Gunpowder Plot (1605) 83, 119 ff Gurr, Andrew 3, 5, 10, 15, 18, 96±7, 99

Field, Richard, publisher 90 Finkelpearl, Philip J x, 13, 57, 195 Fish, Stanley 126 Fletcher, John x, 57, 95, 97, 100 ff Demetrius and Enanthe, or The Humorous Lieutenant 100, 102; The Honest Man' s Fortune 56±7; The Loyal Subject 59± 60, 195; The Tamer Tamed, or The Woman's Prize xvii±xviii, 13, 42 ff, 55±61, 138, 195; The Wild Goose Chase 100; (with Beaumont) The Scornful Lady 93; (with Massinger) Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt xvi±xvii, 11, 54 Fortune, The (theatre) 8, 21 ff, 194 Foucault, Michel 51, 111

Hall, Joseph, satirist 54, 167 Hall, Susanna, daughter of William Shakespeare 101 Hammer, P.E.J. 67 Hariot, Thomas xvi±xvii, 66 Harsnett, Samuel, licenser, later Archbishop of York 47, 162 ff, 177±87, 199 Harte, Sir John, Lord Mayor of London 74±5 Harvey, Gabriel 52, 63±4, 65, 68, 105, 167 Hayward, Dr John (also Sir John) 13, 162±91; The first Part of the Life and Reign of King Henry IV ix, xii, xvii, xx, 53, 162±91 Hector of Germanie, The xv±xvi

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Devereux, Robert, 2 nd Earl of Essex xiii±xiv, xvii, 7, 53, 105, 162, 165 ff, 170 ff, 174 ff, 189, 199 Devonshire, 1st Earl of, see Blount, Charles Digby, Sir John, 1st Earl of Bristol 149, 151 Dobson, Michael 107 Dollimore, Jonathan 78 ff Dominis, Marco Antonio de, Archbishop of Spalatro 40, 136 ff Donne, John 43±4, 52 Dowling, Margaret 162 ff Dryden, John 128±9, 197 Dudley, Lord Robert, Earl of Leicester xiv, 5, 17, 53

Heinemann, Margot 135 ff, 149±50, 198 Heminge (Hemmings), John, actor 13, 47, 49, 98, 106 ff, 192 Henri IV, King of France 54 Henrietta Maria, consort of Charles I 47 ff, 56±61, 101, 138 Henslowe, Philip 4, 30±1, 76, 83, 95±7, 106 Herbert, Edward, Lord of Cherbury 6 Herbert, George 6 Herbert, Sir Henry (Master of the Revels 1623±73) ix, xi, xvii, xix, 5±6, 11±13, 41±61, 72, 88; acquires office from Astley 11, 45; and Charles I 11±12, 14, 138; licenses works for the press 43±4; office-book of 5, 13, 41 ff, 92±3, 134; opinion of predecessors 13, 49±50; re-licensing of old plays 13, 49; and William, Earl of Pembroke 11; and The Ball (Shirley) 12, 42, 45±6, 137±8, 146; and Believe as You List (Massinger) xi, xvi±xvii, 6, 12, 71, 138, 147; and A Game at Chess (Middleton) xi, xvii, 11±12, 40, 100, 132±61; and The Honest Man's Fortune (Fletcher) 56±7; and The King and the Subject (Massinger) xi, 14±15, 138, 154; and The Launching of the Mary, or the Seaman's Honest Wife (Mountfort) 55±6, 58; The Loyal Subject (Fletcher) 59± 60, 195; and The Magnetic Lady (Jonson) 13, 42 ff; and The Spanish Viceroy 12±13, 40, 49±50, 58; and The Tamer Tamed, or The Woman's Prize (Fletcher) xvii±xviii, 13, 42 ff, 55±61, 138, 195; and The Wits (Davenant) 10±11, 13, 42, 58±9; and The Yonge Admiral (Shirley) 42, 46±7, 58±9 Herbert, William, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain (1615±26) xix, 11±14, 65, 133, 135, 145; competition with Buckingham 135; warrant to Master of the Revels (1622) 11 Herbert, Philip, 1st Earl of Montgomery and 4th Earl of Pembroke, Lord

Chamberlain (1626±42) xiv±xv, xvii±xix, 12, 15, 65 Heywood, Thomas 95, 98±9; An Apology for Actors 3, 10, 72; The English Traveller 91±2, 94, 98; The Rape of Lucrece 98 Hinjosa, MarqueÂs de la, Spanish Ambassador Extraordinary 139 Holland, Earl of, see Rich, Henry Holles, John, Lord Haughton 133 ff Hotson, Leslie 67 Howard, Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham, Earl of Nottingham, Lord Chamberlain (1583±85), Lord Admiral (1585±1619) 3, 8, 18 ff, 81 Howard, Edward, The Women's Conquest 129 Howard, Lord Henry, Earl of Northampton xi, 117, 119 Howard, Lord Thomas, Earl of Suffolk, Lord Chamberlain (1603±14) 121 Howard-Hill, T.H. 11, 108, 135 ff, 149 ff, 156, 197±8 Hoy, Cyrus 30±1 Hunsdon, 1st Lord, see Carey, Sir Henry Hunsdon, 2 nd Lord, see Carey, Sir George Ingram, William xix, 4, 8 innyard theatres 4, 76; use of forbidden 4, 18, 21, 26, 193 Inns of Court 6, 61 Isle of Dogs, The, see under Jonson, Ben, and Nashe, Thomas Isle of Gulls, The, see under Day, John Jackson, William A. 188 ff, 200 James I, King of England xix, 47, 94, 129, 134 ff, 148, 187 ff Jenkins, Harold 106 Jones, Richard 63, 65, 67, 160±1 Jonson, Ben xv, xx, 42 ff, 64, 69, 72, 95, 102±3, 106, 109±10, 114±31, 192; and covert allusions xi, xiv, 114±31; reversion to Mastership of Revels 45, 131; The Alchemist 91±2; Art of Poetry (translation and preface) 114, 124, 128; Bartholomew

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214 Index

Fair 31, 130±1; Catiline 91; Discoveries 109±10, 125; Every Man in His Humour 91, 95, 114; Every Man Out of His Humour 35, 91, 102, 114, 121, 125, 184; Hymenaei 114; The Magnetic Lady 13, 42 ff; The Magnificent Entertainment 114, 129; Poetaster 38, 123; Apologetical Dialogue 114, 116±17, 119, 121 ff; Sejanus xi, 91, 114, 117, 119, 122; The Silent Woman (Epicoene) 93; Volpone (and `Epistle') xi, xvii, 10, 52, 62, 91, 114±31; Works (1616 folio) 114 ff, 128; (with Chapman, Marston) Eastward Ho xi, 9, 39, 46, 60, 116 ff, 121±2, 127, 147; (with Nashe) The Isle of Dogs 10, 18, 21, 24, 117 Justices of the Peace 4, 8; of Middlesex 4, 19, 22, 75, 78; of Surrey 4, 19±20, 22, 78 Kastan, David Scott xix Kempe, William 34±5, 97, 184 King and the Subject, The, see under Massinger, Philip King, John, Bishop of London xvi, 54±5 King's Men xvi, 12±13, 15, 39, 43 ff, 59, 88, 91 ff, 93±4, 103, 134, 145; (control of) 13, 40, 43 ff, 49±50, 58 King's Revels, Children of 97±8 Knight, Edward, bookkeeper to the King's Men 48±9, 57 Knutson, Roslyn 10, 31, 33, 39 Kyd, Thomas 85, 96 Lady Elizabeth's Men 93 Lafuente, Fray Diego de (Padre Maestro) 140 Langley, Francis 19 Late Murder in the White Chapel, The, or Keepe the Widow Waking by Dekker, W. Rowley, Ford and Webster, see Dekker, Thomas Laud, William, Archbishop of Canterbury xvii, xix, 13, 42±3, 47 ff, 61, 153, 186

Lee, Maurice 185 Leggatt, Alexander 29 Leicester, 1st Earl of, see Dudley, Lord Robert, also Sidney, Sir Robert Leicester's Men 5 Lennox, 2 nd Duke of, see Stuart, Ludovic Levy, F.J. 166, 187 Lewalski, Barbara 10 Limon, Jerzy 135 ff London authorities (Lord Mayors, Aldermen, Corporation and Common Council of) 3 ff, 16 ff, 21±2, 28 ff, 71 ff, 74±8 Long, William B. 8, 85 Lowin (Lowens), John, actor 49 Lyly, John 192; Pappe with an Hatchet 74±5 MacLean, Sally-Beth 3, 17 McCoy, Richard 53, 175 McMillin, Scott 3, 17 Malone, Edmund 134 Marlowe, Christopher xx, 62±89, 96, 113, 161, 196; Dido Queen of Carthage 63, 84; Dr Faustus 64, 70 ff, 80, 82 ff, 87±8; Edward II 64, 84; Hero and Leander (dedication) 63±4, 66; The Jew of Malta 62, 84; The Massacre at Paris 84; Tamburlaine 63, 84, 161 `Marprelate, Martin' 24, 74±5, 164, 190 Marston, John 54; Antonio's Revenge 37±8; The Malcontent 35, 38±9, 93±4; verse satires 167, 183, 186 Massinger, Philip 69, 97; Believe as You List xi, xvi± xvii, 6, 12, 71, 138, 147; The King and the Subject xi, 14±15, 138, 154; (with Fletcher) Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt xvi±xvii, 11, 54 Matthew, Sir Tobie 150 ff Maurice, Prince of Orange 11 Merchant Taylors Company 77 Meres, Francis 63±4, 101, 184 Meyrick, Sir Gelly 176 Middlesex, Earl of, see Cranfield, Lionel

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Index 215

Middleton, Thomas xx, 69, 146±7; A

Game at Chess xi, xvii, 11±12, 40,

100, 132±61; The Second Maiden's

Tragedy (putative author) 10, 54,

71; Women Beware Women 92 (with

W. Rowley) The Changeling ix, 40

Milton, John 108

More, Sir Thomas, see Sir Thomas More

Moseley, Humphrey, publisher 100 ff

Mountfort, Walter, author of The

Launching of the Mary, or the Seaman's Honest Wife 55±6, 58

Mountjoy, Lord, see Blount, Charles

Mullaney, Steven 29, 192±3

Mulryne, J.R. 92

Murray, Sir James xi, 119, 147

Nashe, Thomas 167, 183±4, 186;

(with Jonson) The Isle of Dogs 10,

18, 21, 24, 117

Nelson, Alan 104±5, 197

Neville, Sir Thomas 100

Newton, Richard C. 128

Nicholl, Charles 67

Northampton, Earl of, see Howard,

Lord Henry Nottingham, Earl of, see Howard, Charles obscenity xvii, 13, 42, 51±5, 155±61

Old Joiner of AIdgate, The, see under

Chapman, George

Olivares, Don Carlos, Conde-Duque d', favourite of Philip IV of Spain 139 ff, 153±4 Osmond, The Great Turk, see under Astley, Sir John Oxford, 17th Earl of, see Vere, Edward de

Oxford's Boys 5

Oxford's Men 22, 26±7

Parker, R.B. xix

Parsons, Robert 175, 187

patronage 5 ff, 12, 25, 195

Patterson, Annabel x, xi±xii, 7, 132,

190±1

Paul's, Children of (boy company) 9,

22 ff, 37, 94

Pembroke, 3rd Earl of, see Herbert, William Pembroke, 4th Earl of, see Herbert, Philip Pembroke's Men 17, 19±20 Percy, Henry, 9th Earl of Northumberland 66

Philip II, King of Spain 6

Philip IV, King of Spain 139 ff,

153±4

Phillips, Augustine 70±1, 193

Philotas, see under Daniel, Samuel

plague and theatre control 4, 17, 23,

192

Plantation of Virginia, The 92

playhouses, order for the eradication

of 8±9, 16 ff, 194

Popham, Sir John, Lord Chief

Justice 162 ff, 169

Porter, Endymion 59

Pory, Sir John 43

press censorship and licensing xviii,

8, 10, 23, 104, 119, 163 ff, 183±4

Privy Council, see Council, Privy

Prynne, William 13, 47, 78, 185

Punishment of Rogues, Vagabonds and

Sturdy Beggars, Act for (1598) 8, 19 ff Punishment of Vagabonds, Act for (1572) 5, 20

Puttenham, George xi±xii

Pym, John 15

Queen Anne's Men 9, 92, 98

Queen Henrietta Maria's Men 45 ff,

59, 137±8

Queen's Men, acting troupe 3, 193;

creation of (1583) 3, 17

Queen's Revels, Children of the, see

`Blackfriars boys'

Ralegh, Sir Walter xvi±xvii, 11, 54, 66,

166

Rasmussen, Eric 71, 195

Red Bull, The (theatre) 98

Red Lion, The (theatre) 3

Redwine, James D. 125 ff

representation of modern Christian

kings, ban on 11, 144 ff

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216 Index

Revels, Children of the, see `Blackfriars boys' Revels, Master of, development of the post 1±15 Rice, John, actor 13 Rich, Henry, Earl of Holland 48, 58, 138 Riggs, David 127±8 riots, anti-alien 7±8, 85 Rose, The (theatre) 9, 26 Rossiter, A.P. 64 Rowley, Samuel 71, 83, 87 Rowley, William 40; (with Middleton) The Changeling 40 Rowse, A.L. 65±6 Ruigh, Robert 143 ff Rymer, Thomas 129 Sackville, Thomas, Lord Buckhurst, Earl of Dorset 121±2; (with Thomas Norton) Gorboduc 6 St John's, palace and former Priory of 3, 72 Salisbury, 1st Earl of, see Cecil, Sir Robert Salisbury Court, theatre 91, 96±7 Sanders, Julie 115 Savile, Sir Henry 199 Schoenbaum, S. vi, 69, 101, 103, 106, 199 Scott, Thomas, author of Vox Populi xv Second Maiden's Tragedy, The, see under Middleton, Thomas Segar, William, deputy to Sir George Buc 104, 197 Shakespeare, William xx, 67±70, 89±90, 113; As You Like It 33, 35; All's Well That Ends Well 35±6; First Folio (1623) 65, 108; Hamlet 1, 7, 10, 33, 39, 71, 92, 99, 105±6, 109, 194; 1 Henry IV 18, 80, 99; 2 Henry IV 18, 99; Henry V 71, 95, 99, 104±5, 108; 3 Henry VI 68; Julius Caesar 34; King Lear 35±6, 39, 92, 162; Love's Labour's Lost 90, 99; Lucrece 90, 105, 110; Macbeth 109; The Merry Wives of Windsor 31, 99; Much Ado About Nothing 95, 99;

A Midsummer's Night Dream 1±2, 33±4, 112; Othello 10, 88, 162; Pericles 92; Richard II xv, xx, 7, 8, 69, 92, 168, 171; Romeo and Juliet 99; Sonnets 90, 110, 196; The Taming of the Shrew 57, 195; The Tempest 109; Troilus and Cressida 35±6, 103±4, 105, 109, 194; Twelfth Night 35±7, 108; Venus and Adonis 90, 105, 107, 110; The Winter's Tale 47, 49, 162, 194 Shepherd, Simon 86 Shirley, James 69, 130, 146; The Ball 12, 42, 45±6, 137±8, 146; The Yonge Admiral 42, 46±7, 58, 59 Sidney, Sir Philip 52; Arcadia 100, 110 Sidney, Sir Robert, Viscount Lisle, later Earl of Leicester 66 Sir John Oldcastle 82 Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt, see under Fletcher, John, and Massinger, Philip Sir Thomas More 7, 81±2, 85 Smallwood, R.L. 28 Somerset, Edward, Earl of Worcester 9, 22 ff, 27 Southampton, Earl of, see Wriothesley, Henry Spanish Viceroy, The 12±13, 40, 49±50, 58 Spencer, Sir John, Lord Mayor of London 28 ff Spenser, Edmund, author of The Faerie Queene 100 Stanley, Ferdinando, Lord Strange, 5th Earl of Derby 17, 66 Stanley, William, 6th Earl of Derby 22 ff Star Chamber, court of 23±4, 43 ff, 59, 61, 163, 171±2, 190 Stationers' Company, and Register 23, 65, 95, 99, 104, 163 ff, 183±4, 189 ff, 196 Stowe, John 29 Strange, Lord, see Stanley, Ferdinando Strange's Men 5, 17 Streitberger, W.R. 2±3 Stuart, Ludovic, 2 nd Duke of Lennox 154

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Index 217

218 Index

Tamer Tamed, The or The Woman's Prize, see under Fletcher, John

Taylor, Gary 18, 107, 111±12

Taylor, Joseph, actor 49±50

Taylor, Michael 156

Tennenhouse, Leonard 52

Theatre, The 3, 18, 26

Tillyard, E.M.W. 85±6

Tilney (Tyllney), Edmond (Master of

the Revels, 1579±1610) ix, 2 ff, 6,

17 ff, 41, 71 ff, 81 ff, 147; attempt to

buy him out 4, 76±7; and

Commission of Censorship (1589)

4, 21, 71 ff, 75±7; `Diplomatic

Manual on Europe' 6; and Charles

Howard, Earl of Nottingham 3, 6;

Special Commission of (1581) 2,

72±3; see also Sir Thomas More

Topcliffe, Richard 19

Tricomi, Albert H. xiv±xv, 132

Troublesome Reign of King John, The ix,

xii

Turner, Olga 139

Vere, Edward de, 17th Earl of

Oxford 22, 26

Vere, Elizabeth de, Countess of Derby

(wife of the 6th Earl) 25

Verneuil, Madam de, Mistress of Henri

IV xiv

Villiers, George 1st Duke of

Buckingham xiv, xvii±xviii, 133 ff,

147±55; unprecedented influence

of 12

Walsingham, Sir Francis 17, 65±6

Walsingham, Sir Thomas 63±6

`war of the theatres' 38

Webster, John 78, 93, 103; The

Duchess of Malfi 102

Weever, John 168

Wells, Stanley 28, 111±12

Werner, Hans xv±xvii

Whitefriars theatre 97±8

Whitgift, John, Archbishop of

Canterbury 21, 53, 71±2, 75±8, 164,

166, 185

Wickham, Glynne x, 2, 8, 73 ff

Wilde, Oscar xix

Wiles, David 34±5

Wilson, Edward M. 139

Wilson, F.P. 100

Wilson, Richard 2, 34, 101

Wilson, Robert, playwright 82

Winstanley, William 130

Wolfe, John 23, 165 ff, 172±3, 190, 199

Worcester, Earl of, see Somerset,

Edward Worcester's Men 9, 22 ff, 34; become Queen Anne's Men 9

Wright, Louis B. 135

Wriothesley, Henry, Earl of

Southampton 90, 111

Yachnin, Paul 14, 154

Young, Richard 75

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Stubbes, John, author of The Discovery

of a Gaping Gulf whereinto England is

like to be Swallowed 13

Stubbes, Philip 78

Stukeley, Sir Lewis xvi

Suffolk, 1st Earl of, see Howard Lord

Thomas, Earl of Suffolk Swan, The (theatre) 19 ff Swanston, Elyard, actor 49±50